Mamma Mia! was a badly written headache based on a badly written live musical, adapted for the screen by the same people who had staged it on Broadway, who leaned on the show's built-in fanbase like a crutch. (No reason to improve something that's already popular, right?) The sequel, being based on...
At the end of The Equalizer (2014), you probably thought everything that needed equalizing had been taken care of. Wrong, dummy! The Equalizer 2 has non-equalized things up the wazoo, just waiting for Denzel Washington to equalize them. He usually does it by breaking someone's arm, though he's...
Jukebox musicals have been popular on Broadway for years, and some — like Mamma Mia! and Jersey Boys — have successfully been turned into movies. With the upcoming release of Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, I thought I’d see if I could come up with some jukeboxes of my own. Since the songs...
Blindspotting is an explosive racial comedy, a love letter to Oakland, and a jumpstart to the movie career of its star, Daveed Diggs, who co-wrote the screenplay with co-star Rafael Casal. Directed by first-timer Carlos Lopez Estrada, the film is set during the last three days of a year-long...
(Screened at the 2018 Fantasia Festival; distribution plans not yet announced.)
Owing to the slippery definition of the word and our robust (for the time being) First Amendment, it takes a lot to get arrested for "obscenity" in America, let alone actually convicted. A few performers and...
From The Searchers to You Were Never Really Here, the "captivity narrative" is one of America's strongest tropes
When Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here (now available on DVD/VOD) came out this past spring, it was hailed as a modern update of Taxi Driver. Like Martin Scorsese’s...
The Blu-ray format arrived on June 20, 2006 -- that’s a whopping 12 years ago for those of you who struggle with mental math -- but there is still an abundance of films that have yet to see a release in that format. Ask a physical media collector which movies they’re hoping to see get the...
(Screened at the 2018 Fantasia Festival; scheduled for theatrical and VOD release by Samuel Goldwyn Films on Sept. 7)
Cold Skin starts with the Nietzsche quote about how monster-hunters must beware lest they become monsters themselves, staring into the abyss may result in the abyss staring back...
(Screened at the 2018 Fantasia Festival. Universal will release it later this year, probably straight to DVD.)
I never saw Tales from the Hood, but if Tales from the Hood 2 is any indication, I must go back and watch it posthaste -- though I wonder if the racial climate of 1995 could have...
(Screened at the 2018 Fantasia Festival; opens July 20 in U.S. theaters)
Unfriended: Dark Web has no connection to 2015's Unfriended except that they adhere to the same format: Both unfold in real time entirely on someone's computer screen via their Skype sessions, Facebook chats, and so...
How you gonna hire one-legged Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to insect the safety features of your spectacular new Hong Kong high-rise, then let bad guys set the building on fire and threaten The Rock's family? You think one-legged Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is gonna stand for that? He is not! He will...
(Screened at the 2018 Fantasia Festival; now playing in U.S. theaters and VOD)
The Night Eats the World ("La nuit a dévoré le monde") has a different mood from most zombie films, which proves to be refreshing. It's less mayhem-oriented, quieter, more drama than horror (though not without its...
“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
This quote is often attributed to George Bernard Shaw, but its real origins lie in G. Stanley Hall’s 1904 book Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime,...
I can still feel the weight on my chest as my husband and I left the theater in silence after A Quiet Place. As a parent in general — but specifically as a parent of a little black boy — it felt all too real, this high-stakes world in which merely existing can be deadly and the smallest mistake...
In March, director Peyton Reed told Empire Magazine that his Ant-Man and the Wasp, despite early reports, is “not a romantic comedy,” and that any romantic connection between its title characters (played by Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly) would take a backseat to the action sequences and...
