Action Films
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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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Spider-Man: Far From Home (PG-13)
There is nothing damagingly, damningly wrong with Spider-Man: Far From Home that would render it unwatchable. But neither is there much to commend it. To be sure, the film is uproariously funny, and the performances are engaging. The film even exceeds expectations in its action sequences. Because the set-pieces are staged live on location in European cities, instead of in wide-open spaces with bland computer-generated backgrounds, the tussles between Spider-Man, Mysterio, and the Elementals have a sense of tactility, geographical clarity, and human stakes that MCU battles have often lacked. I will also grant that the film has two show-stopping, jaw-dropping sequences that are among the MCU’s finest moments of visual storytelling. But the MCU has almost always been funny, and often to its detriment.
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Casino Royale (PG-13)
“Bond, James Bond” is one of the most ubiquitous names in modern western culture – a name that has become synonymous with a particular brand of lightweight sensuality. The last fifty years have seen the release of over twenty James Bond movies, and even those who have never seen one know exactly what they are all […]
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Dark Phoenix (PG-13)
It’s difficult to imagine nowadays, but there was a time when superhero films had to make an effort to sell themselves to an audience. Studios genuinely didn’t know if people would be willing to buy into all the fantastical and often strange inner workings of comic book storytelling. After 1997’s disastrously bad Batman & Robin sank like an anchor […]
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Godzilla: King of the Monsters (PG-13)
In interviews, director/cowriter Michael Dougherty has called his Godzilla: King of the Monsters “the Aliens to [the 2014 Godzilla]’s Alien.” The comparison is an apt one. Alien, directed by Ridley Scott in 1979, was a moody, slow-burning horror film, prizing dread and atmosphere over character or plot. Its 1986 sequel, James Cameron’s Aliens, shifted gears […]
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John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (R)
John Wick was slick, streamlined, and light on its feet. Clocking in at ninety minutes, it was short and sweet. It knew what it was about (violence of the ultra-cool variety), and how it was about it (headshots — lots and lots of headshots), and did it pretty well. The problem, of course, is that […]
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Avengers: Endgame (PG-13)
One of the many, many things the Marvel Cinematic Universe has severely lacked is a sense of poetry — visually, verbally, thematically, or otherwise. But what strikes me about Avengers: Endgame is that it is a small but significant step toward reversing that trend. The film contains a surprising number of poetic touches and grace […]
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Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (PG-13)
I have a strange history with the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. When the first film came out in the summer of 2014, I was completely taken in by it and willfully ignored the friends who told me it was bad – until I watched it one time too many and veritable scales fell from my […]
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Iron Man Three (PG-13)
As the fishes above attest, this is not going to be a grand apology for an overlooked masterpiece. I am merely offering a few modest words on a film’s modest merits. In the rush of Marvel movies released since its premiere in 2013, Shane Black’s Iron Man Three has largely been forgotten – a victim […]
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Hellboy (2019) (R)
Life’s all about checks and balances. Just last week I was excited that we’d finally gotten a superhero film, Shazam!, that was interested in being something different and had real thematic weight. And then the clunky, absolutely unnecessary reboot of Dark Comics’ Hellboy came along this weekend and reminded me that happiness is sometimes so fleeting. To put it mildly, […]
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Shazam! (PG-13)
As an avid comic book fan, let me tell you… This glut of superhero films we’ve been enduring for the past decade or so has been absolutely exhausting. Quality control ensures that each of these films look the part, but very few have captured that kinetic childhood joy of flipping through comic book panels and dreaming about […]
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Captain Marvel (PG-13)
Somewhere in Captain Marvel, the heroine (Brie Larson) sits down to chat with Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Earth has been invaded by shapeshifting aliens, and to prove he isn’t one, Fury rattles off a string of backstory details and character quirks. He then asks the good Captain to do the same, but instead of […]
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Alita: Battle Angel (PG-13)
Alita: Battle Angel knows exactly what kind of film it is. At one point during its two hour runtime, surprisingly brisk for a big budget Hollywood blockbuster these days, Alita (Rosa Salazar) straight up offers another person her heart. She goes so far as to remove it from her mechanical chest, holding it in her hand […]
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Aquaman (PG-13)
When FilmFisher’s managing editor Timothy Lawrence asked me to review Aquaman, I groaned. I had only seen one DC film since Man of Steel (which I loathe), and that was the Marvel-esque Wonder Woman. I have heard tales of how Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and Justice League are incredibly awful. Therefore I was not […]
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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (PG)
I love Spider-Man. To be more specific, I love Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. That isn’t to say I don’t love any other iteration of the character but it is the standard with which I judge all other iterations. Perhaps it isn’t the most objective, and it certainly isn’t the most ideal. While I think it is the […]
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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (PG)
Half-Blood Prince is the first, and perhaps only, Harry Potter film to feel like it isn’t trying to be a good “Harry Potter film” and just does its best at being a good film. The seventh film has a similar tone, and Azkaban encapsulates what it is to be a Harry Potter film the best, but my point stands. In the sixth cinematic installment of the franchise, Harry Potter and his friends are ordinary British teens placed in extraordinary circumstances, but instead of focusing on the circumstances, the film chooses to focus on the teens – and is much better off because of it.
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Venom (PG-13)
When I was a very young boy, I thought Venom was pretty cool. I liked Spider-Man, and I liked dinosaurs, and I imagine this is why the idea of a carnivorous Spider-Man held some appeal for me. It is more difficult to pinpoint the source of the morbid curiosity that drove me to the theater this weekend, where I forked over twelve dollars to see Sony Pictures’ Venom under the pretense of “taking one for the FilmFisher team.”