Considering the unforeseen tragedy that plagued the eagerly awaited Black Panther: Wakanda Forever before the film even went into production, co-writer Ryan Coogler should be commended for actually producing a thrilling and awestruck follow-up without the use of its star, the late and beloved Chadwick Boseman.

A lot of franchises crash and burn spectacularly when they attempt to continue after the death of their star (Just look at the Pink Panther movies after Peter Sellers died), so the direct sequel to 2018's massive hit might not be as memorable or even as successful as its predecessor. But just the mere fact that it's a spectacular technical achievement while it also manages to provide a touchingly taut and intimate exploration of grief and the journey to recovery is a miracle on its own.

The story begins with the inevitable: T'Challah, The Black Panther, the ruler and prote...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Blind Fury is as close as Hollywood got to make their own version of the Zatoichi legend. The smooth and calm charisma of the blind samurai who is a meager and humble warrior, who helps those in need by making his adversaries drop their defenses upon the sight of a seemingly harmless and weak blind man is translated with an eye for style and efficiency.

For a late 1980s production of such a project, Rutger Hauer ends up being the perfect choice to bring this archetype to the western audience, explored in the form of Nick Parker, a Vietnam vet who was blinded after an attack during the war and was conveniently trained by the local swordsmen to fight using his non-sight senses.

Hauer could certainly be a stoic presence who could communicate a vast array of emotions with a simple look. But he could also easily bring out a mischievous and dark side. That's why ...Read the entire review

Just like Chinatown, the city of Amsterdam in Amsterdam isn't as relevant to the title as what it represents. Chinatown represents an unknown and incomprehensible evil in people, while Amsterdam stands for forces of camaraderie that fight against such incomprehensible evil.

The city is the backdrop for the intimate bond and love between two World War I veterans, the aloof doctor Burt (Christian Bale) and his steadfast best friend Harold (John David Washington), as well as a free spirit of a nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie, whose grounded performance keeps the character from coming across as a manic pixie dream girl).

Leaving the ugliness and senseless carnage of the war, the trio finds solace in Amsterdam, using the city's name as a signifier of peace and love. The chemistry between the three actors and writer/director David O. Russell's love for his characters makes it a joy...Read the entire review

The Movie:

1942's Val Lewton-produced Cat People became a classic and overcame its meager beginnings as a low-budget B-horror by showcasing such a suspense-over-creature-effects style that the titular creatures are actually never seen. Of course, this was partly due to the budget being so small that the crew couldn't afford costumes that would be passable for even a b-movie, but art through adversity created a haunting tale of longing and rage that's told entirely through shadows and growls.

One of the ground rules for a remake is almost always that it shouldn't blindly follow in the footsteps of the original. In that sense, Paul Schrader's vision for Cat People passes the smell test. As implicit as the 1942 film was when it came to its tension, lore, scares, and undertones of sexual frustration, Schrader chose a path that was equally as explicit.

This meant that the se...Read the entire review

When Mad Max: Fury Road came out and blew everyone's minds, a lot of critics remarked that director George Miller is a grandpa and that they expected him to make patient and reflective movies now that he's in the twilight of his years. Certainly not the best and craziest action film of recent years that single-handedly revolutionized the genre at a time when such a thing was deemed to be a long shot.

Well, perhaps to appease those expectations, here comes Miller's Three Thousand Years of Longing, the existentially introspective movie that critics might have originally expected from an intellectually and emotionally complex grandpa of his ilk.

As amazing and groundbreaking as Everything Everywhere All Once is, its success will not do any favors for the audience's expectations here. In order to piggyback on that lightning in a bottle's success, Three Thousand Years of Longing's dis...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Marty is an indelibly charming and instantly lovable dramedy about the burgeoning romance between a lonely New York butcher and a socially awkward schoolteacher who fall in love despite the defiance of their cynical, superficial and judgmental social circle.

The great Paddy Chayefsky's touchingly humanist screenplay is very light on plot, with an intense focus on the inner lives of his protagonists as they discover each other during a long night.

Similar indie dramas that are light on plot, that put their entire narrative weight on character and dialogue are very common now, but back in 1955, such a film not only being made but winning the coveted Best Picture prize was an eye-opener for filmmakers who wanted to tell intimate human stories without having to resort to superfluous eye candy and sensationalist premises.

The natural chemistry between...Read the entire review

At least this much can be said about NOPE: When it comes to the suspense-heavy and cryptic alien attack on a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere movies, it's better than Signs.

Writer-director Jordan Peele made a name for himself as one of the only, or perhaps the only, filmmaker in contemporary cinema whose marquee name is enough to put butts in seats.

His signature tone of elevated horror works as impeccably constructed and paced straight genre exercises mixed with Rod Serling-esque explorations of dense and complex social issues.

Unlike zeitgeist setting masterworks like Get Out and Us, which gave distinct and unique commentary on race relations and the class system, NOPE is content with just being a thrilling, terrifying, and ultimately fun-filled 1950s B-movie style alien attack flick.

There are some themes floating underneath the surface here and ther...Read the entire review

As much as I loved (almost) every second of Thor: Love and Thunder with the giddiness of a geeky teenager soaked in 1980s pop culture, I can also fully understand why it might have rubbed some MCU fans the wrong way.

The so-called self-aware "MCU humor" that has been bugging a lot of fans lately is in full effect in Taika Waititi's latest Thor epic. After two entries that tried to treat this cheesy character as Shakespearean mythology, Waititi swept in with the terrific Thor: Ragnarok and finally tapped into the goofy 1980s machismo parody potential of the titular Norse god.

Ragnarok almost killed Thor's badass charisma and Love and Thunder rages in with a glorious kaleidoscope of 1980s kitsch to finish the job. This is as close to a rip-roaring ZAZ or Mel Brooks parody of the MCU that just happens to be a part of the real deal.

There have been attempts at delivering...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Hit the Road begins as an organically hilarious road trip that centers on a family bickering as they travel to an unknown destination, and transitions into a heartbreaking drama about loss and missed opportunities.

Writer/director Panah Pahani so gracefully and lovingly transitions between the tones that every moment in a wide gamut of emotions that his film is going for is not only earned but is intrinsically vital to the narrative.

Here's a great film that doesn't play a single false note while trying to present a symphony with a three-piece orchestra. The charming meagerness of Panahi's scope, sticking pretty much entirely to the car ride that the family is going through, is what makes his story so immediately relatable.

Regardless of our culture and nationality, we have all been through family trips where the crazy and restless little brother...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The Fabulous Baker Boys has a premise that seems tailor-made for a happy-go-lucky old Hollywood screwball comedy, with some dazzling musical numbers to boot, but refreshingly decides to play it as a grounded and credible drama.

The setup involves two piano player brothers named Jack and Frank Baker (real-life brothers Jeff and Beau Bridges, respectively), who perform light and accessible jazz tunes to disinterested patrons at various restaurants and clubs across Seattle.

The brothers have been at it for over a decade, and they need something fresh to bring in more money, so they decide to audition for a singer. Cue the gorgeous, talented, but abrasive and undependable Susie (Michelle Pfeiffer), who's the kind of girl who's not even a bit apprehensive about the fact that her previous employment was at an escort service at first meet.

A traditional...Read the entire review

Some of the best war films depict how the lives of those who are not directly engaged in an armed conflict and the politics surrounding it, the innocents who just want to live their day-to-day lives, are shattered as they are forced to harden faster than any semblance of hope can reach them. Children are some of the most resilient amongst us to pain and suffering brought on by war, as witnessed by the joy in Ukrainian refugee children's eyes upon being given something as simple as a cheap toy.

Louis Malle's masterpiece Au Revoir Les Enfants is still one of the most heartbreaking and devastating films about the holocaust, even though it doesn't show a single frame of the concentration camps or World War II for that matter. The film takes place entirely in a boarding school and depicts the friendship between a Christian kid and a Jewish student who's hiding his identity.

As the te...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Mira Nair's awkwardly structured by charming interracial romance Mississippi Masala once again emphasizes a fact that's blatantly obvious about America more than any other country: It's a melting pot full of various cultures, races, and faiths blending together, trying, and sometimes struggling, to find common ground when it comes to peace, understanding, and especially love.

Through the impeccable Chemistry between stars Sarita Choudry and Denzel Washington, it tells the romance between an Indian immigrant from Uganda named Mina and an African-American carpet cleaner named Demetrius. The two share a delightful meet-cute when Mina crashes into Demetrius' truck and a simple but passionate romance ensues.

The most captivating moments in Nair's film come during moments that have nothing to do with the plot or narrative conflict. It's the quiet moments between t...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As an Immigrant to the USA, I can sympathize with the inner conflict that almost all immigrants have when it comes to living in the unique cultural melting pot that is this country. How much do we assimilate to American culture and leave our past identity behind? How many of us are immigrants, and how much is a citizen? And what does the concept of American culture mean anyway, when the point of the country is that it's made up of various different cultures and races that (hopefully) believe in an ideology of democracy and personal freedom?

The two protagonists of Wayne Wang's ultra low budget DIY 1982 noir/drama Chan is Missing, the comical uncle-nephew duo Jo (Wood Moy) and Steve (Marc Hayashi), meditate on these questions as they go on a wild goose chase across San Francisco's Chinatown, looking for their friend Chan who suddenly disappeared with the money meant for...Read the entire review

I don't understand why the Jurassic World franchise (Formerly known as the Jurassic Park franchise) has a consistent allergy to letting its full blockbuster schlock flag fly but offering an installment that fully takes place in a world where dinosaurs and humans battle it out.

After the third act edging of the San Diego T-Rex attack in The Lost World all the way back in 1997, the fans were promised the move towards seeing all kinds of prehistoric reptiles wreaking havoc on the city streets and on locations that weren't yet another secluded island in South America.

Yet Jurassic Park III delivered just that: More of the same. After the stupendous and tone-deaf decision to have the dinosaurs released to the world at the end of the last Jurassic World entry, the Fallen Kingdom, some teaser shots before that movie ended promised yet again that the franchise was finally going...Read the entire review

It's almost like Alex Garland made Men knowing it would be released two weeks after the news about Roe v Wade being overturned. It's a furious and pointed art-house horror about the male obsession with possessing women's minds, bodies, and souls. Its inherent terror and gruesome fervor should provide the perfect visceral release for those who have spent the last two weeks perpetually pissed off.

Garland doesn't really offer a traditional script with Men, but more of a premise that's expanded through its strict adherence to the multiple allegories about gender relations that Garland expresses through a gradually rising cinematic intensity, culminating in a fever pitch of anxiety and terror. It's about a woman named Harper (Jessie Buckley) who rents a quaint and quiet house in a quaint and quiet small English town in order to get away from a traumatic event that involved her husband, or soon...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The elevator pitch for C'mon C'mon, writer Mike Mills' beautifully and refreshingly humanist exploration of life through a child's mind, sounds like a cringe-worthy piece of saccharine Oscar-bait: A childless and independent-minded journalist is (Joaquin Phoenix) saddled with his precautious nine-year-old nephew (Woody Norman) while touring the country for work.

At first, the awkward man-child struggles to relate to his nephew, even though his work involves interviewing children his age about their views on life. Eventually, the uncle connects to his inner-child, while the nephew learns the meaning of responsibility. Cue five Oscar nominations and zero wins for the feel-good movie of 1992.

Yet Mills, like a cinematic magician of the highest prowess and stamina, avoids every single temptation for this premise to go horribly wrong, all the while creating the mo...Read the entire review

The best surprise about the experience of watching Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is the gradual realization that Sam Raimi was hired not because of his experience with putting together an excellent superhero epic with the original Spider-man duology (Not trilogy, mind you, let's not go there), but because of the kinetic energy he brought to horror in the 1980s with his trademark mix of goofy and terrifying thrills.

Sure, fans of the MCU get their share of the cameos that are expected from anyone who slaved over every frame of the film's trailers, and let's face it they weren't hard to pinpoint. Those who watched Marvel's What If on Disney Plus already got about half of them anyway. You can read your share of reviews that go into as much detail as they can about the new additions to the MCU after Disney's 20th Century Fox takeover, without offending the "NO SPOILERS!" flyer th...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Billy Wilder once said that writing a movie without directing is like making the bed for someone else to have sex in. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), perhaps Wilder and frequent writing collaborator I.A.L. Diamond's most relatable character, knows what that means, pretty much literally.

He wants to be the big shot at his humongous corporate insurance office (DP Joseph La Shelle's ever-imitated cinematography makes him disappear amongst the other drones), so he lets his superiors use his cushy and conveniently placed Manhattan apartment. They can bring their mistresses away from the prying eyes of their wives while dangling a promotion for Baxter's troubles.

Wilder always found ways of trolling the Hayes Code when it comes to depicting sex, and The Apartment is especially notable for being a dramedy that becomes unusually frank when dealing with sex.

Baxt...Read the entire review

Sometimes we are the only ones who blame ourselves for our own mistakes. Even after people have moved on from what we've done, and stopped judging us, the final hurdle becomes self-forgiveness. David (Nathaniel Ansbach) is in such a predicament as he returns to his small lakeshore upstate New York town after dropping out of college. While David and his best friend Bobby were playing with guns eight years ago, David's gun was discharged, resulting in Bobby getting shot and dying.

David's return represents an unwanted return to this painful past as the town, along with both David and Bobby's families, had already begun the long trek to overcome their communal grief. The only person who seems to find value in David's return is Bobby's sister Amanda (Gabrielle Kalomiris), a dancer who struggles with low self-worth and depression.

Amanda doesn't think she's good enough to leave this s...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As long as social and political paranoia and the fear of "the other" permeates society, there will always be room for a new adaptation of Jack Finney's pulp sci-fi/horror novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Or its inspiration, Robert Heinlein's Puppet Masters, or any of the multitudes of comedic takes on the premise like The Faculty or The World's End).

The premise of "pod people" from space integrating their consciousness into ours by making copies of ourselves that look and sound like us, but aren't us, can always be and is always retooled over certain periods in order to take full advantage of the social paranoia that it can bring to the audience. Considering the period when an Invasion adaptation is made is almost as fascinating as watching that adaptation.

Don Siegel's 1956 film was almost all about the red scare and 1950s idyllic small-town Americana'...Read the entire review

The Movie:

It's always a gamble to reconnect with material that gave one joy during their teen years. Will it age well, or will it just remind one of the cringe-inducing awkwardness and unsophistication of youth? Beavis and Butthead was such a gamble for me.

At fourteen, I was the perfect age for appreciating the shenanigans of two supremely stupid early teen burnouts (Voiced by Mike Judge) entirely driven by their reptilian brain being fed non-stop by vapid pop-culture that only glorified materialism, a corporate sanitization of sex, and empty charisma.

On its surface, there was a form of rebellion against normality that came with the zen distillation of life into junk food, crude humor, and pop culture. And of course, the characters' annoyingly infectious laugh helped a bit. Upon revisiting Beavis and Butthead as an adult, and with the hindsight of creator Mike...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The folly of man lies in its egotistical illusion that it can cheat death and nature through self-appointed aggrandizement. No matter how great a king becomes, he will eventually share the soil with a lowly pauper, the greenery of mother earth absorbing their bodies in equal measure. Writer-director David Lowery\'s (Pete\'s Dragon, A Ghost Story) haunting and hypnotizing masterwork, half Arthurian mythology and half contemplative medieval horror, sends its brave knight Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) through a journey that begins with faux chivalry and meticulously breaks him down to the vulnerable core of any human being who eventually comes face-to-face with the inevitability of nature and the finality of their time in it.

Lowery based his film on an actual Arthurian legend, a morality tale of heroism that sees our knight setting on a journey to meet the titular character, wh...Read the entire review

The Movie:

With the recent Halloween Kills, Michael Myers and his whiteface Captain Kirk mask is still going strong as an enduring slasher franchise after four decades. Ironically, John Carpenter\'s 1978 horror masterpiece, perhaps the finest distillation of the genre\'s id, was the one story that derived its strength from never continuing on from its haunting and perfect ending.

Carpenter\'s Michael Myers is pure, unmotivated, non-sensical, unstoppable evil. The reason for what was first conceived as a low-budget exploitation flick called The Babysitter Murders lingering as the pure distillation of terror to this day lies in Carpenter stripping as much reason and humanity from his iconic killer as possible, making him represent the random and sudden specter of death when we least expect it, and when we\'re at our most comfortable and sheltered.

The universality of this fear that\'...Read the entire review

The Movie:

This is just a plain fun time at the movies. Sure, it's about the lengths that immoral people are willing to go in search of easy riches, a Billy Wilder staple, but one can't help but wonder if the overall reason for The Fortune Cookie's existence is to give as much space for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau to flex their natural opposites attract chemistry.

As usual with films with this duo, Lemmon is the meek and moral everyman, at least the decent everyman the audience should aspire to be, as a sports photographer who suffers a broken leg while on the job, and Matthau is the sneaky representation unchecked American entitlement, as his brother-in-law who tries to scam the insurance agency by having Lemmon's character make his injury look much worse than it is.

The premise is of course used as an excuse for a series of set-pieces where the duo goes through rid...Read the entire review

The Series:

Drunk History endured for six whole seasons as one of the most bizarre yet hilarious comedy shows of the last decade mainly because it never waivered from the tried-and-true formula since the premise's inception on the Funny or Die website. This formula is as simple as it is unique, bold, and to quote Graham Chapman, very, very silly indeed: Each episode is sliced into three sections. Each section contains a comedian who gets an inch away from a fall-on-your-face drunk.

They are then tasked with giving a complex and dense history lesson on a particular story, mostly within US history. Since they're as drunk as a skunk with an especially heavy drinking problem, they slur their words, go into absurd tangents, and predictably sabotage their self-serious history lecture every step of the way. The audio from the "lecture" is then meticulously recreated using actors, includ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The DVD Savant review of Cecil B. DeMille's tribute to the 19th-century railroad's frontier spirit is full of exaggerations about the triumphs and mistruths about backdoor dealings and cronyism around the building of the rail system that connected both coasts of the USA together. As it is with every major infrastructure deal in the old west (And in the new west if you think about it), some fat cats got their beaks wet and a lot of common folks (Especially if they were people of color) got screwed. This is my long-winded way of pointing out that if you dive into Union Pacific looking for a historical and levelheaded chronicle of how the titular railroad came to prominence by linking the two coasts together, you won't find it here.

What you will find is a rousing old-fashioned epic western full of aw-shucks ...Read the entire review

The Movies:

The half-hour Peanuts specials that began with the iconic Charlie Brown Christmas were all short films of their own. So it made sense for the franchise to occasionally dabble in theatrical features with varying degrees of success. This blu-ray set compiles all four of Snoopy and Co's theatrical releases in one convenient package.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown: This is the first feature release within the Peanuts brand. It contains the trademark charm and focuses on the virtues of failure that made Peanuts a massive hit across the world. For a first feature effort, it's also a bit rough around the edges, with fairly slow pacing that indulges in too many psychedelic montages. Still, it's a lot of fun to follow the hapless Charlie Brown into the national spelling bee championship, even though anyone who knows Chuck can guess how it will turn out. 3 stars.

Snoopy Co...Read the entire review

The Movie:

As time passes, CB4 feels more and more dated in equally positive and negative measure. On one hand, it's an often hilarious time capsule that captures the fracturing in hip-hop that was taking place during the early 90s. This fracture is represented within the three distinct personalities that form the fictional gangster rap group CB4.

Gusto/Albert (Chris Rock) is the murderous gangster type who doesn't give a damn if you like him or not, with a soft suburban nerd hiding behind the media-hyped persona. Stab Master Arson/Otis (Deezer D) is the big butt and party-loving Sir Mix-a-lot and 2 Live Crew type who uses blatant misogyny to cover for his sexual inadequacies. Euripides/Dead Mike (Allan Payne) is the socially conscious rapper who's confused about how to communicate black power to a mainstream audience (His solo track "I'm Black Y'all", with all lyrics simply repe...Read the entire review

The Show:
After the original Avatar (Not the James Cameron one, and definitely not the M. Night Shyamalan adaptation) took the animation world by storm and proved that American anime can capture the tone and style of the best that the Japanese industry has to offer, its followup series The Legend of Korra had a lot to live up to. A considerable amount of hardcore Avatar fans were disappointed by the fact that the new iteration pushed the timeline a hundred years into the future, introduced almost all-new characters and storylines while being merely inspired by the original show rather than emulating it. In my opinion, all of these qualities turn The Legend of Korra into a uniquely satisfying experience, on the same level of quality as the original show, but delivering a narrative and style that stands on its own.
Just like every Avatar (A Dalai Lama-like figure who can control al...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Over the last five decades, The Producers has become such a mainstream pop-culture staple, that I think we take for granted the anarchic genius of Mel Brooks' directorial debut. The smash-hit Broadway musical, and the 2005 feature that followed certainly did their best to re-establish 1967 original as a quirky comedy about a duo of kooky characters trying to put on a Broadway musical that's so bad that it's guaranteed to be a flop so they can get away with a scam. The premise alone is so famous that multiple films that followed, like Spike Lee's Bamboozled, tried to rip it off with diminishing returns. It's such a part of our culture that any time someone mentions a tax scheme, The Producers is brought up as a reference.

But let's take ourselves back to the mid-1960s and follow a well-respected comedy writer who gets his first big break to write and direct his own movie. Inste...Read the entire review

"Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future"

David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)

The Movie:

Reviled and downright ostracized upon its release, the film found quite a cult following during the decades afterward but is still not as appreciated as the milestone of violent cinema as it should be. It's equally tender, raw, extremely violent, and brutal, sometimes all during the same scene.

When a Mexican crime lord, known only as El Hefe, finds out his young daughter's been impregnated by a ladies man named Alfredo Garcia, he offers a million dollars for anyone who can bring his head to him. A hapless bartender named Bennie (A deliciously hammy Warren Oates) finds out from a prostitute named Elita (Isele Vega), with whom he's also in love, that Alfredo is already dead. Bennie decides to desecrate Alfredo's grave in order to bring his head to the band of professional killers, who offer him a measly $10.000.

The first half of the film is actually quite a tender love s...Read the entire review

The Movie:
It's a shame that Runaway Train, a deft and rough-around-the-edges character study about the inevitability of man's fight against his own nature wrapped around a nail-biting action thriller, got lost in the shuffle amongst its studio's regular fare of exploitation. The Cannon Group was legendary for their output of shameless schlock, which later made them a magnet for lovers of 80s cheese and trash. Check out the terrific doc, Electric Boogaloo, about their rise and fall.

So when a legitimately great and prestigious piece of 70s style gruff filmmaking fell on their laps, they didn't have the budget or the experience to push for awards recognition. Runaway Train still got away with three Oscar nominations, but its fearless execution and bold approach to its deeply flawed characters deserved more. Thankfully, it gained quite a cult following over the years by cineph...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Even though Marty Feldman didn't become the household name for absurdist and boundary-pushing spoofs the way Mel Brooks has, partly due to his untimely passing at age 48, his throw the kitchen sink and let's see what sticks approach to comedy certainly deserves a second look. Feldman's of course known primarily for his iconic role as "Eye-gore" in Brooks' classic Young Frankenstein, which helped propel his unique blend of old fashioned slapstick and modern biting satire forward with projects like The Last Remake of Beau Geste, a wild cornucopia of self-aware comedy stylings packaged into a spoof of foreign legionnaire melodramas. Feldman's style can be described as a mix of Brooks and Monty Python, blended with the aura of Buster Keaton. It doesn't always work, but it's a worthy effort.
The plot follows the beats of Percival Christopher Wren's novel, Beau Geste, which ...Read the entire review