1st Reviews

  Mufasa  boasts a beautiful cinematic experience that’s best experienced in 3D. The visuals are transporting with their photorealism and colorful sceneries of the wild world, and get to develop new settings without behind held back by recreating scenes from another movie the way 2019’s  The Lion King  was. That alone warrants the theatrical experience here, and not much else. Though  Mufasa  isn’t remaking another beloved movie anymore, it’s still restrained by the same lack of characterization that made the photorealistic animals feel emotionally distant in its predecessor. The animals can’t quite emote like they can in other animated films, and this creates a tonal dissonance between what the original 1994 film set for the franchise and the photoreal road the filmmakers are going down now. Aaron Pierre’s gravitas gives Mufasa just the right profundity, but Kelvin Harrison Jr., who’s a wonderful actor, feels rather miscast as Scar, a character who feels i...

Carry-On is like Die Hard, but set in an airport. Oh… wait a second, that’s just Die Hard 2. Okay, so Carry-On is like Die Hard 2 meets Phone Booth, and while not as good as either of those movies, it provides sufficient thrills with a touch of Christmas spirit.  Where this movie excels is in the simplicity of its premise. It’s essentially a hostage situation where the villain is using the protagonist as a puppet. Jason Bateman plays a terrorist trying to get a mysterious briefcase through an airport. Taron Egerton plays a TSA agent who’s forced to comply with Bateman’s demands, in order to keep his friends and loved ones alive. It maintains a solid level of suspense, and I found myself constantly wondering how Egerton’s character would adapt and react to the increasingly stressful and dangerous situations he was placed in.  Where this movie really falters, is in the execution of those tense situations, and just how completely implausibly they often play out. I’m fine with sus...

  The American Dream has been deconstructed many times on screen with sweeping epics that define a decade. The tale of immigrants attempting to break through a system working against them has had many iterations that have become devastating depictions of the obstacles faced.   Brady Corbet’s  The Brutalist  is a unique journey of one man’s dream of artistic ideation and standing the test of time through his architecture. When visionary architect Lászlò Toth (Adrien Brody) and his wife Erzsébet fled post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy, they met a wealthy client, Harrison Lee Van Buren Sr. (Guy Pearce), who changed their lives forever.  The opening crawl of  The Brutalist  hits the senses with an incredible overture by Daniel Blumberg and an inspiring journey ahead for Lászlò Toth. The first half is a slow build with rich dialogue showing the business tactics used to work the system in America.  Brody’s earnest performance is endearing w...

Sergei Kravinoff, the son of a crime lord, develops a gift for fighting for and defending wild animals, but soon old and new foes from his life converge as he must embark on the most dangerous fight of his life. Explaining the movie just then was a difficult task, not in an effort to avoid spoilers of the premise, but because the movie is so shallow it’s hard to really try and sell. It doesn’t quite make much sense, but worst of all, it isn’t fun to sit through. Weak character motivations and a hideous visual style plague this so-called origin story for another Spider-Man villain who Sony tries to manipulate into an antihero, rather unconvincingly. Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s casting as the titular character could’ve been promising in another movie, but he instead looks bored with the material he’s given, and who can blame him? Ariana DeBose and Fred Hechinger are also trying to salvage characters given no weight, but Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott, and Russell Crowe are all awful. N...

  Wicked: Part One defies gravity and expectations, with one of the greatest stage to screen adaptations of all time. Jon M. Chu captures the magic of cinema, with a movie that demands to be seen with an audience on the biggest screen possible.  Bringing a stage play to the screen is no easy feat, but this film so effortlessly embodies everything I experienced watching the broadway show. The tone, heart and spirit of the play are preserved in ways I never expected, especially from a big Hollywood production. It naturally feels much grander, showing us so much more of Oz than was possible on the stage. Bigger isn’t always better, but the story is never lost in the spectacle - in fact, it’s elevated by it. We’re given such bombastic, sweeping sequences, including the exhilarating musical numbers, but when the film pulls back in for those more intimate moments, it grabs all the right heartstrings.  My biggest fear going in was the runtime, clocking in at a whopping 2 hours a...

  Angelina Jolie portrays opera singer Maria Callas as she reflects on her life of song, love, and pain. Pablo Larrain's visual style is breathtaking, with the large sets of Maria's house and the beautiful shots of 1970s France reminding us that this is a filmmaker always in full command of his craftsmanship. He dives deep into the soul of Callas as she looks deep into herself as well, and Jolie's commanding, multilayered portrayal of the singer is spectacular. Jolie not only wonderfully acts the singing scenes, but shows the aching of a woman whose meaning and sense of self has always been attributed to the one thing she's losing: her voice. The movie shows us much about who Maria is, but not enough about who she  was  throughout her life to reach this point -- not factually, but emotionally, making the audience guess all of this. The editing doesn't quite manage to pull us into these dazzling flashbacks of Maria in her prime, and at worst, feel like rather frustra...

  If you were to ask me “Are you not entertained?” during my time with Gladiator II, I would answer “I am, but only mildly”. Ridley Scott’s legacy sequel provides solid popcorn entertainment, but fails to fill the giant sandals of his best picture winning epic.  Let’s be clear: Gladiator II isn’t a bad movie. The action is satisfying, the set-pieces are grand, and the performances are quite strong. However, it’s hard to escape the shadow of its predecessor, which is widely regarded by many as one of the greatest films of the 2000s. As an extension of the story and ideas the first film established, it works, but it lacks the emotional depth and thrill needed to get audiences invested in this new chapter. I wouldn’t go as far as calling it soulless, but it doesn’t strike me as being very inspired. The final act, while still entertaining, is also a lot sloppier than everything leading up to it.  Ridley Scott is no stranger to crafting big, historical epics, and his experienc...