Search for 2019

Let me admit to loving the premise behind Supervized. The problem is that a movie needs more than a great premise – it needs to grow and nurture that idea, and that’s where Supervized falls short. To an extent and for a while, the film get...

One thing Tell It to the Bees gets right is presenting the societal stigma associated with same-sex relationships during the 1950s, especially in small, closed-off communities. Unfortunately, while director AJ Jankel (Super Mario Bros – yes,...

Although Terminator: Dark Fate, the sixth film in the Terminator franchise, is an improvement over the other non-Cameron-directed sequels, it doesn’t rise to the level of the first two entries in the series. And, while Terminator die-hards a...

For roughly the first two-thirds of its 109-minute running length, To the Stars is an effecting and effective tale of female bonding. Unfortunately, the wheels come off toward the end as melodramatic contrivances result in an unlikely climax a...

Tolkien represents a classic standard-order biopic – a high-level profile of someone with minimal flesh on the bones. More like the dramatization of an Encyclopedia Britannica entry than a fully rendered movie, Tolkien provides details about ...

By nature, endings are sad. Therefore, it’s understandable if a few tears are shed when the final credits begin rolling at the conclusion of Toy Story 4. After all, according to everyone involved, this is reallytrulywepromisethistime the swa...

With today’s cinematic focus squarely on gender-balanced films, it almost feels odd to encounter something so testosterone-driven. Nevertheless, Triple Frontier is less a shrine to masculinity than a callback to the themes embraced by the Jo...

Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang opens with a warning that nothing in the film is true. Although that might be stretching things a bit, it puts viewers on notice that the events depicted herein adopt as gospel the Robin Hood-li...

In 2014, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son missed the #1 spot on my annual Top 10 list by a whisker (it was one of three films that year to which I awarded four stars). A few years later, his Shoplifters topped the l...