All Film Reviews

Spider-Man 2 (PG-13)

According to FilmFisher’s rating system, to award a film the perfect 5-fish rating is to claim the film is “not merely a towering achievement in its genre” but also “makes ardent strides towards virtue and offers the viewer an acute and profound entrance into the ancient discussion of human excellence and the transcendence of God.” I am willing to make all these claims about Spider-Man 2.
Hell or High Water (R)

While the wild west has certainly evolved in the past two hundred years, Hell or High Water evokes the power of romantic frontier stories. This contemporary west is a stage for gunfights and thunderstorms as well as casinos and car chases. It’s a west where cowboys carry smartphones and drive new trucks, but also wear […]
A Canterbury Tale (G)

In this strange season we currently find ourselves in, I occupy more time than ever before by reading books and watching films. A little over a month ago I watched something of a forgotten gem — British duo Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale — and not a day has passed since that it hasn’t crossed […]
The Invisible Man (R)

In the early days of cinema, just after the introduction of sound, many of the cinematic genres we’re familiar with today were crystallized by particular studios who focused their efforts on certain niches. Universal Pictures had the horror market cornered with their adaptations of late 19th century literature, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and HG […]
Light from Light (Not Rated)

The central question of Paul Harrill’s gentle chiller Light from Light is the same one ghost stories have been asking for centuries: is the house haunted? Richard (Jim Gaffigan), who’s begun experiencing strange phenomena since his wife passed away in a plane crash, suspects it may be. Shelia (Marin Ireland), who works a normal desk […]
JoJo Rabbit (PG-13)

Parodying Hitler is nothing new. Charlie Chaplin played him in The Great Dictator (1940), long before Look Who’s Back (2015), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Mein Führer: The Really Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler (2007), and the countless memes that subtitled Hitler’s bunker tirade in Downfall (2004). Before the U.S. had entered WWII, mocking Hitler for two […]
1917 (R)

When I was about 13, my father rented (from an establishment called Blockbuster) an odd little film called Rope. He is an Alfred Hitchcock aficionado and had discovered that this was one of Hitch’s lesser known films, which he had yet to see. In the days before IMDb and easy internet access, information like this was […]
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (PG-13)

An early scene in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a fitting metaphor for the film as a whole. Finn (John Boyega) and Poe (Oscar Isaac), fleeing TIE Fighters in the Millennium Falcon, escape their pursuers by “lightspeed skipping” – a dangerous maneuver (or so we’re told, though it goes smoothly enough for our […]
Black Christmas (R)

It’s fitting that, about three-quarters into Bob Clark’s yuletide chiller Black Christmas, I almost laughed out loud when a character exclaims in a panic, “The calls are coming from inside the house!” Before watching, I’d been unaware that the iconic line now synonymous with the horror-slasher genre had originated here, knowing it only as an […]
Black Christmas (2019) (PG-13)

Further proof that studios think that any intellectual property is better than having no intellectual property, Black Christmas, the second remake of the original film, actually doesn’t benefit from its namesake since it bears very little of that infamous, incredible proto-slasher from 1974. The idea to update what was an incredibly socially relevant and quite subversive […]
The Irishman (R)

Roger Ebert once said that “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” In other words: length is not indicative of quality, but together, the two get along just fine. Few names are as ubiquitous with lengthy runtimes as Martin Scorsese, who, since the 1970s, has been making films that […]
Frozen II (PG)

Firstly, let it be known that our fearless editor had to reach out to see if anybody was willing to see Frozen II over its opening weekend. I chose to fall on the sword. Not because I was hopeful that Walt Disney Animation’s latest would be worthwhile – no, I knew going in that I was […]
Marriage Story (R)

When I saw Marriage Story lately, I intended it to be the first in a double feature. After the film ended, however, I was so overwhelmed that I canceled my ticket to the second film and drove straight home, though I also considered turning around and seeing Marriage Story again that same night. A conventional […]
Ford v Ferrari (PG-13)

Let’s get this one thing straight: there’s nothing magical about 7000 rpm. I own an Infiniti G37 that redlines at 7500 rpm and I’ve been over 7000 rpm a couple of times. Nothing special happened. In fact, it’s usually when I’m trying to get on the freeway and the automatic gearbox shifted down a gear […]
Dr. Sleep (R)

In Dr. Sleep director Mike Flanagan manages to weave together disparate threads skillfully, delivering a film about hauntings and reconciliation that is both faithful to its origins and strong enough to stand on its own.
Prince of Darkness (R)

It’s an extremely unfortunate bit of irony that John Carpenter’s magnum opus, unquestionably The Thing (which itself is the pinnacle of 1980s horror, but I digress), was a huge commercial failure. Misunderstood at the time and subsequently written off, Carpenter’s greatest work almost became his biggest downfall. His career would stabilize but never fully recover. I often think […]
Parasite (R)

“You know what kind of plan never fails? No plan at all,” muses Kim Ki-taek (Song Kang-ho) in Parasite, the latest film from Korean maestro Bong Joon-ho. It’s an apt sentiment: the movie is so full of wild energy it feels as if it could throw control to the winds and spin off the rails […]
The Lighthouse (R)

Unlike many of his modern peers, there’s something appreciable about Robert Eggers’ unfussy approach to the horror genre. The Witch might just be the most frightening horror film of this decade – incredible, given that it feels pulled from a different era of filmmaking altogether. But what made that film work wonders in its bid to […]
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal (Not Rated)

The premise of Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, a five-part animated series that aired nightly this past week, sounds like something that might have been cooked up by middle school boys during a slumber party: “Dude, wouldn’t it be awesome if a caveman teamed up with a T-Rex?” And yet, it is probably the most interesting cartoon […]
Joker (R)

Joker is a movie no one knew they wanted, least of all a diehard Batman fan such as myself, but it’s a deeply moving, disturbing tragedy about the world modernity built. It might be the most culturally important film to arrive in a long time. It does a Taxi Driver impression arguably better than Taxi […]