All Film Reviews

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 […]
The Tree of Life (PG-13)

“I give you my son.” In terms of theological scope and artistry, The Tree of Life is an essential Christian masterpiece. Like the Sistine Chapel, like Handel’s Messiah – like these two masterworks, Tree of Life spans from creation to new earth. The entirety of our existence. Our place in the created order. Is it esoteric? […]
Ad Astra (PG-13)

Ad Astra is a story of fathers and sons. It is about the way men are out of touch with their feelings because kindness and intimacy were never modeled for them. It is about confronting the emptiness of space and reckoning with our place within the universe. It is exactly the film I feared it […]
It: Chapter 2 (R)

As Stephen King writes his way through his fifth decade, he holds the most credible claim to the title Greatest Horror Writer of the 20th Century. Others may have reached greater heights (say, for instance, William Peter Blatty), but those who did cannot match King’s prolific output. Those who have published comparatively often (this time we […]
Overcomer (PG)

Overcomer, the latest film from Alex Kendrick and his brother Stephen, continues the filmmaking tradition begun with 2006’s Facing the Giants – movies made with evangelical Christian faith as both the heart and goal of the narrative. What Overcomer also continues is the increase in filmmaking skill evidenced by the Kendrick Brothers. The first act […]
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (R)

Mistah Kurtz – he dead. This bleak pronouncement closes Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, and opens T.S. Eliot’s 1925 poem, The Hollow Men. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film, Apocalypse Now, completes the circle by following the outline of Conrad’s novella – a voyage up a river to find a madman named Kurtz – and […]
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (PG-13)

As humans, we are predisposed to relate through stories. Considering that some of the earliest forms of recording history itself came from cave drawings and hieroglyphics, which recorded events through broad illustrations that predate storybooks, it makes absolute sense that a proclivity towards storytelling is something ingrained into our subconscious. Maybe that’s why we’re able […]