Nicolas Cage is Dracula. The movie is exactly what you want and expect from this, and it honestly could've been much worse. Hoult and Awkwafina are having a good time, but Cage is having a blast chewing the scenery. He was meant for this role and gets more screen time than I expected. Renfield knows what it wants to be and is bloody dumb fun.

Renfield

Best Marvel movie since Endgame (not counting No Way Home obviously). James Gunn has done something special with his wonderfully weird sci-fi world and reminds us why we love these a-holes. Each character gets the right amount of screen time, it's full of heart and laughs, and the soundtrack is expectedly solid. We even get the MCU's first f-bomb. It's an emotional and beautiful end to this story. Looking forward to what Gunn does over at DC.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Gerard Butler, or "GButt" as he's affectionately called in this house, gives us another entertaining-enough action flick. We get a classic 90s B movie complete with annoying background actors, cheesy villains, and a muscular co-hero in Mike Colter. It's everything you want and expect in this kind of movie, for better or worse, and I do respect GButt for never phoning it in for these.

Plane

M. Night Shyamalan is interesting in that he has an many hits as he does misses. For every "Unbreakable", you get something like "Old" which may be one of the worst movies I've seen in recent years. Fortunately "Knock at the Cabin" is more a return to form. The tension, pacing, and mystery reminded me a lot of "Signs", my personal favorite of his. The storytelling and acting can be clunky at times, and I'm still not convinced Dave Bautista is anything more than an adequate actor, but it's an interesting concept about sacrifice and the end of the world that is worth the watch.

Knock at the Cabin

It doesn't reinvent the con artist genre by any means, but everything it does do, it does so well. The entire cast is fantastic, and there's enough great acting and plot twists to keep you engaged and guessing who's conning who til the end.

Sharper

Anna Kendrick is the only memorable thing about this film. Her performance as a woman experiencing emotional and psychological abuse in a manipulative relationship is solid, but the supporting cast and plot is weak. It's just not as compelling as the very real issue it's trying to explore.

Alice, Darling

Nothing new to see here. Self aware AI, creepy little girls, murder robots; it’s been done before. The original Child’s Play set the standard for this sort of thing, and the 2019 reboot played around with tech gone wrong to better results. Honorable mention to Annabelle and Small Soldiers. I didn’t expect more than a fun light horror movie, but the writing was bad and predictable.

M3GAN

Sick is a horror movie set during the COVID-19 era. It's a pretty standard "teens in a cabin" slasher up until the third act when the killer's motivation is revealed. The acting is subpar, and the characters are flat all around. The film is pretty self aware but may not be as clever, or entertaining, as it thinks it is. 

Sick

At 76 yrs old, this is Spielberg's love letter to the power of film, family, and growing up. The legendary director takes a trip down memory lane in his most personal film, loosely based on his childhood as an aspiring filmmaker. It's a coming of age story full of flaws, optimism, and nostalgia. The task of casting your younger self isn't easy, but newcomer Gabrielle Labelle does a respectable job as the young Jewish teenager trying to balance his childhood and his dreams. I felt Michelle Williams was somewhat miscast as his mother, but her performance is sure to get her an Oscar nod. Paul Dano as his dad is a bit of a dud. Overall a wonderful film about and by one of the most iconic filmmakers of our generation.

The Fabelmans

This is a bad movie. It is easily the worst of the recent DC movies, and may be one of the worst superhero movies ever. I'd say Morbius is better, and I couldn't even get halfway through that. The only reason I even finished Black Adam, was so that no one could argue my review wasn't fair or that the movie got better towards the end. It didn't. 

It all starts with The Rock aka Dwayne Johnson. I generally like The Rock. He's an action star who plays himself in every movie, and you know what you're getting yourself into. Jumanji would be my personal favorite. He has a wide appeal, and is a guaranteed draw at the box office. John Cena is having a successful run in the superhero business, and it's natural that The Rock would give it a shot. On paper, it looks sound. On screen, my god. We all know he isn't an amazing actor, but this is the first time I thought he was a bad one. He grunted and scowled his way through the whole movie and didn't have the presence he usually does. Who knows if it was the writing, the costume, or the character, but none of it worked.

The rest of the movie is just a giant CGI dump truck. It almost got to the point where it was so bad that it circled back to being good, but it failed at that too. The acting and dialogue were painful, and the plot was an incoherent mess. I only gave this any points because it bombed so bad that it caused DC to reset their cluttered superhero universe and start from scratch.

Black Adam

Avatar is a strange blue beast. The first was praised for its visuals, but the acting and plot were uninspired. Anyone I discuss the movie with feels indifferent or outright doesn't like it. There is seemingly no fandom for this franchise, and yet it's the #1 highest grossing movie in the world (after a couple calculated re-releases edged it past Avengers: Endgame). 

Similar to the first, it's all style over substance. The plot is bland, forgettable, and the movie is 30 mins too long. I found myself walking back to my seat slowly from the bathroom and at one point counting how many speakers there were on the theater ceiling. It doesn't help that Zoe Saldana is given less screen time and not much to do other than wailing when something goes wrong. And Sam Worthington just doesn't have the presence to lead this big a movie. Matt Damon would've been the better choice, had he not turned down the role.

The visuals on the other hand are phenomenal. The one thought that kept crossing my mind was just how beautiful the movie was. There's nothing like it, and it does deserve to be seen on the largest screen you can find. And yet, I still don't think the tech is at a place that can at least match the raw emotion of an actual actor. Non-blue Stephen Lang as villain Colonel Miles Quaritch is more compelling in the first film. 

No one asked for this sequel, but here we are. Way of the Water is nearing the $2 billion mark. It's too early to tell if it will surpass the first film's numbers, but James Cameron has already said it has made enough to move forward with three more sequels. Three! Pandora is a rich and lively planet, and James Cameron has done some admirable world building. I love how he's constantly pushing film tech forward. I love how it's getting butts into theater seats again. Ultimately though, it's just not a fun watch. And that's the very least I expect in an expensive blockbuster movie. 

Avatar: The Way of Water

A delicious black comedy about class inequality and revenge that unfolds over a pretentious full course meal. It's delightful to point and laugh at the dinner guests who we’ve all known, seen, or even been at some point. I'm guilty of taking photos of my dishes time to time. The mystery and tension starts at the beginning of the movie and doesn’t let up. Although the third act gets a little disjointed, your’re paying for the experience, and it was worth it. Now I just want a cheeseburger.

The Menu

The Green Mile will always get compared to Shawshank. Both based on novels from Stephen King, both directed by Frank Darabont, and both Best Picture nominees, only a few years apart. The former loses DP Roger Deakins, and it shows. It's still a good-looking film, but you lose the wonderful framing and lighting shots. Some of the characters are a bit flat, however Michael Clarke Duncan is unforgettable, and Doug Hutchison as the cowardly Percy Whetmore is someone you just love to hate. The movie suffers from an overly long runtime. At 3 hours 9 minutes, it is longer than any (theatrical) Lord of the Rings film. A little more time in the editing room would have made this a tighter film.

The Green Mile

I’ve been a fan of Rian Johnson since The Brothers Bloom, which I still feel is his best film (The Last Jedi is his worst, but we can get into that some other time). In his neo-noir directorial debut Brick, you see he has a passion for a cleverly written murder mystery. I admittedly wasn’t a huge fan of Knives Out when I saw it in theatres, but I’ve rewatched it at least a handful of times and have come to love it. Daniel Craig is fantastic, and the rest of the casting is perfect and fun to watch. It’s leagues better than Kenneth Branagh’s painfully forgettable Murder on the Orient and Death on the Nile.

Knives Out

Glass Onion is a blast but richer and more extravagant doesn't necessarily mean better. The twisty plot is more layered and gets a larger playground, but some of the characters weren't as fleshed out as the first. Leslie Odom Jr was sadly wasted, and Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc seems to have been missing something. Knives Out was a tighter and more balanced film, however it's official that no one does a fun whodunnit better than Rian Johnson. 

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

It can get pretty tricky scoring an old movie you love and have seen many times. You have to find a way to separate the nostalgia from the film itself. In the case of Shawshank, it’s simply one of the classics. The acting, writing, score, pacing, heart, tension; it all comes together effortlessly, and the legendary Deakins makes it all look beautiful.

The Shawshank Redemption

If Kevin McCallister and John McClane had a lovechild, he would be David McHarbour. The comparisons are spot on, both literally being mentioned in the movie. It's hard these days to capture the right tone for an R-rated kinda family Christmas movie, but they somehow find a great balance of heart and guts. Instant cult classic, sure to come with lots of sequels.

Violent Night


I love space. For as long as I can remember, this has been true. When I was a youngling, my dad would tuck me in at night and tell me if I shut my eyes tight enough I could see all the stars in the universe. I would fall asleep on my waterbed the same way for years. The first movie I saw that involved space was Return of the Jedi, which also happens to be the first Star Wars movie I laid my eyes on. That and the rest of the trilogy was obviously a huge influence, but so were many others from the 80s and 90s. The wonder, the unknown, the optimism. 


Apollo 10 1/2 passionately captures all of this with a giant scoop of nostalgia. The premise: what if a kid made it to the moon before Neil and Buzz? The majority of the movie is a love letter to the bygone era. An endearing yet simple coming of 

 age story during simpler, but not perfect, times. I’ve never been a big fan of the rotoscope animation, but it suits this film beautifully. We’ve seen Apollo 11 so many different ways, however it was a fresh and wholesome take to see it all in the perspective of a 10 year old. Only thing missing was a waterbed.

Stars: Glen Powell - Zachary Levi - Jack Black

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood

By far the most Wes Anderson-y film Wes Anderson has ever Wes Anderson-ded. And sadly not in a good way. It is possibly his most artistically refined movie to date, but it lacks the heart and adventure of his prior works. Clearly a passion project of his, it was very beautiful (and often overwhelming) to stare at but mostly unenjoyable and a trudge to the very end.

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