Review: “Last Christmas”

2.5 out of 5 stars. “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, but the very next day, you gave it away.” We all know the words to “Last Christmas,” the iconic holiday favorite by Wham! And that knowledge just adds to the painful predictability of the movie “Last Christmas,” a sort of rom-com directed by […]

Review: “The Lighthouse”

3.5 out of 5 stars. In 1801, the policy was having a two man team of lighthouse keepers was changed after an incident at Smalls Lighthouse in Wales, when one keeper named Thomas died in an accident, leaving the other keeper, also named Thomas, alone to man the lighthouse, resulting in him going a little […]

Review: “Parasite”

5 out of 5 stars. In “Parasite,” the poor prey on the rich, but it turns out that there is always someone worse off than you. Writer and director Bong Joon-ho’s commentary on class—South Korea’s entry to the Academy Awards this year, and the first Korean film to win the Palm d’Or at Cannes—is a […]

Streaming Movie Recap: October 2019

We are already a few days into November, but before getting too wrapped up in the onslaught of holiday movies, I wanted to take a minute to review a few films released on streaming services in October: EL CAMINO: A BREAKING BAD MOVIE (NETFLIX) If you were a fan of the series “Breaking Bad,” then […]

Review: “Dolemite Is My Name”

5 out of 5 stars. “Critics don’t know nothing. I don’t even know why they come out in the first place. They don’t even like to have fun. Nobody cares what the critics say.” Okay, so maybe this line delivered by Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore toward the end of “Dolemite Is My Name” […]

Review: “The Current War”

2 out of 5 stars. The story of the war on the currents is actually a very illuminating one (pun intended), although you wouldn’t know it based on “The Current War,” the film from director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon that dramatizes that event, spanning from 1880 to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. The movie squanders its top-notch […]

Review: “Zombieland: Double Tap”

3 out of 5 stars. As far as post-apocalyptic zombie comedies go—and yes, I do believe that that is a genre in and of itself, thank you—it doesn’t get much better than “Zombieland.” The 2009 film directed by Ruben Fleischer takes place in an America that has been overrun by zombies, with the nerdy and […]

Review: “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”

1.5 out of 5 stars. “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” sounds like a pretty straightforward title: it’s a movie about Maleficent, one of Disney’s most memorable and fearsome villains, and she’s evil. But in fact, this sequel to 2014’s “Maleficent” neither features her as being a mistress of evil, nor features Maleficent much at all. This […]

Review: “The Addams Family” (2019)

3 out of 5 stars. The target audience for MGM’s animated, family-friendly version of “The Addams Family” is likely too young to be familiar with the creepy crowd’s origins, which started as a comic by Charles Addams in the late 1930s, is most remembered for the sitcom it spawned in the 1960s, and cropped up […]

Review: “Judy”

3 out of 5 stars. Some films feel like they were really only made to showcase their stars, and “Judy” is no exception. The biopic directed by Rupert Goold and based on the stage play “End of the Rainbow” focuses on the final months of singer and actress Judy Garland’s life, and while its depiction […]