Film Reviews

Red Rocket is the latest feature film from writer and director Sean Baker. Baker has made a name for himself recently with back to back hits, Tangerine which was shot entirely on iPhones, and The Florida Project. Red Rocket is the story of Mikey Saber (Simon Rex), a washed-up porn star who comes back to…
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Encanto is one of the most vibrant and colorful animated movies from Walt Disney Studios. It follows Mirabel (Stephanie Beatriz), a Columbian teenager who is struggling to find her place in her family. The Madrigal’s live in a magical house in a city called Encanto. They’re different from the others who live in the village…
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Here we go with another movie in the Marvel franchise. This time we’re dropped into the world of Shaun (Simu Liu) and his best friend Katy (Awkwafina) who work as valets. Out of the blue, the two are attacked by a group who are after Shaun’s pendant – given to him by his deceased mother.…
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Free Guy is one of those movies where the premise sounds really dumb, especially if you’re not into video games. But I have to say this was one of my more surprising favorites of 2021 so try to stick with me here. Guy (Ryan Reynolds) is living a pretty average life in Free City. He…
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“I knew that was what you were thinking. You’re always thinking things, you thinker! You thinker! You think things!” This is an absurd line that could have really been awful if delivered by someone other than Alana Haim. Licorice Pizza is Haim’s first acting role but you’d never know it from her performance. She plays…
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Aretha Franklin is the undisputed Queen of Soul! She led an extraordinary life, full of triumphs and tribulations. Respect is an attempt to capture her life in all its glory. As with most biopics, Respect begins with Aretha as a child played by Skye Dakota Turner. We get some background on her upbringing as her…
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Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most popular and well-known works. One might grumble and wonder if we really need another adaptation of Macbeth. When an adaptation is as good as Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, the answer is inevitably yes, yes we do. This one has a killer cast with Denzel Washington taking on…
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I had regrettably never seen anything from director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi but I was anxious to see Drive My Car because it had been garnering so much buzz during awards season. Drive My Car is adapted from a short story by Murakami Haruki which is ironic because the run time of the film is two hours…
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Petite Maman was written and directed by one of my favorite filmmakers working right now, Céline Sciamma. You might recognize Sciamma’s name from her 2019 tour de force, Portrait of a Lady on Fire. If you haven’t seen that masterpiece, you should really stop reading and go watch it. Petite Maman is an incredibly different…
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Don’t Look Up is from writer and director Adam McKay and has the signature McKay tone but the premise is a little more absurd than his usual subject matter. While doing research one night, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a massive comet on a trajectory to collide with Earth in six months. Fellow scientist Dr.…
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