The Movie:

Written and directed by Rob Zombie, the 2022 incarnation of The Munsters was the subject of almost instant internet scorn the moment the trailer was released online a few months back. Now that the movie is out on Blu-ray and on Netflix, making this the first of the director's films to not get a theatrical release, the movie proper can be evaluated, making some wonder... was it really deserving of all the scorn it received when the trailer dropped?

Yes and no.

The movie, which is essentially a prequel to the TV series that inspired it, is extremely light on plot. What little story there is starts in Transylvania and revolves around how Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang (Richard Brake) and his assistant Floop (Jorge Garcia) created Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) who then moved away from his creators and found new life as a rock n roll star. From...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Director Scott Derrickson may not have a perfect filmography but I usually find something to like in his movies, with the 2012 horror hit Sinister being a highlight. Derrickson re-teams with Ethan Hawke for the psychological and supernatural horror film The Black Phone, which he also wrote and produced. Set in late 1970s suburbia, the film sees a serial abductor known as "The Grabber" picking up children from the streets outside Denver. Hawke plays the antagonist in a Japanese Oni mask, driving his balloon-filled van around to inflict dread and pain on others. Finney (Mason Thames) and Gwen Blake (Madeleine McGraw) live with their alcoholic father (Jeremy Davies), and Gwen shares the vivid, psychic dreams of her late mother. A friend of Finney's gets abducted after a baseball game and before h...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Thanks (or damn) the pandemic for hampering it, but Robert Eggers has made three films in seven years, with The Northman being the third following The Witch and The Lighthouse. Each have been full of sometimes stark, captivating imagery, and The Northman takes that rep and builds onto it.

Eggers co-wrote The Northman with Icelandic author Sjon (Dancer in the Dark), and the story is kind of simple in retrospect. Amleth is a son to King Aurvandil (Ethan Hawke, Boyhood) and Queen Gudrun (Nicole Kidman, The Killing of a Sacred Deer). Amleth witnesses his father's murder at the hands of his bastard Uncle...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

THE FILM:

If you find yourself wondering whether you have stumbled upon another to sequel to Happy Death Day during the opening minutes of Freaky, you're not far off. Writer/Director Christopher Landon injects similar humor into this horror comedy, which also offers an energetic female lead and a game supporting cast. This time out, Kathryn Newton plays high-school outcast Millie Kessler, who is stalked by the Blissfield Butcher, a serial killer played by Vince Vaughn. Through some nifty magic via a dagger known as "La Dola," the butcher and Millie unwittingly switch bodies. Now, the brutal killer has the innocent shroud of a teenager, and Millie freaks out the entire town walking around in the pants of a murderer. Freaky is a welcome entry in the body-swap genre, and is a breezy, entertaining s...Read the entire review

THE TRILOGY:

It is a rare feat when all three films in a trilogy are good, but that is exactly what the Back to the Future Trilogy provides. Written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Universal Pictures, the three films chronicle the time-travelling exploits of Michael J. Fox's Marty McFly, Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown, and a DeLorean time machine. The original film was released in 1985, and its sequels arrived in November 1989 and May 1990, respectively. The real 2015 may not have included the hoverboards, self-fitting clothing and rehydrated food depicted in the films, but Back to the Future is pretty spot-on with its predictions of a time then 20 years in the future. I consider the original film the best, followed by the 1885-set Part III and finally Part II, the plot of which is a bit to...Read the entire review

Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross), one of the music industry's biggest stars, is struggling with her next move. Still smarting from the mixed critical and commercial response the last time she released a new record, she's been maintaining her popularity through touring and a greatest hits album. On the advice of her manager Jack (Ice Cube), she's putting out a live greatest hits album, and considering a Vegas residency, but she's (rightfully) concerned that her fans will think her career is entering a twilight phase. One person in Grace's corner: her assistant Maggie (Dakota Johnson), who has worked for Grace for three years. Maggie not only believes that Grace should move forward with a new album, but she's spent her free time in the studio secretly producing her own version of Grace's live album, with dreams of turning producing into a career. The thought of openly asking Grace if she can produce he...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Judd Apatow is an ambitious filmmaker who frequently gives comics starring roles in his original films. His latest project is The King of Staten Island, which stars Pete Davidson of "Saturday Night Live" fame. Written, produced and directed by Apatow, the film is a semi-biographical story about its star, who lost his firefighter father on September 11, 2001, and has publicly struggled with depression. Perhaps not as poignant as Funny People or as funny as The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The King of Staten Island is still a worthy rambling on finding one's self and moving past hardship. Davidson gives a compelling performance, and is joined by a strong supporting cast, including Marisa Tomei, Bill Burr, Steve B...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Trolls World Tour was if memory serves, a digital-only release when it came out in April 2020, I'm happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, given that I had a young child in the house, I would like to think that I was aware of the film, but held out long enough that I would get a peek of it soon enough through the generosity of the DVD Talk offers. I even watched the first Trolls movie to both kick the can down the road, but also as a sort of ramp-up to whatever I would experience with this one. Good timing wins again!

Anyway, the CG affair finds Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger returning to contribute work on a screenplay that Walt Dohrn returned to co-direct, this time with David P. Smith. This film finds Poppy (Anna Kendrick, Read the entire review

THE FILM:

There is little I can say about the first summer blockbuster, Jaws, that you do not already know. Newly released on 4K Ultra HD, this seminal thriller from Director Steven Spielberg continues to thrill 45 years after its initial release in June 1975. The film forever changed Hollywood, and studios from that summer forward began making high-concept, easily marketable thrillers and action pictures with mass appeal. This movie also blew the training wheels off of Spielberg's film career, which had up to that point included made-for-TV thriller Duel and The Sugarland Express with Goldie Hawn. Spielberg became a household name, and John Williams' memorable score will forever be chanted on beaches and at pool parties. It is bitters...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

I do not recall much about it, but I remember thinking 2016 horror film The Boy was halfway decent and at least entertaining. Four years later, we get a sequel no one asked for: Brahms: The Boy II. The director and writer of the original, William Brent Bell and Stacey Menear, respectively, return here, but Brahms is little more than a convoluted bore despite the film's incessant audible stingers and attempted jump scares. I'm not sure what the f**k Katie Holmes is doing here, but I guess her career has been on ice as of late. The movie runs a brief 86 minutes, but I found myself fighting sleep as it rolled toward an uneventful, anticlimactic finale. While I always appreciate a good horror film, there is not much worth staying awake for here.

As I recall, the original film had s...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The debate about who or what invented the structure and formula of movie rom-coms goes back to Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, or the resurgence of screwball comedies in 1930's Hollywood. I believe it goes further back, to Jane Austen's passionate but amicable romance novels about then-modern-minded young aristocratic women who stumble into unexpected love, while tackling the growing pains of adulthood. It's no surprise that Austen's work can easily be fitted into modern rom-coms, like the Bridget Jones series moonlighting for Pride and Prejudice. One can simply imagine high school coming of age rom-coms like Pretty in Pink as Victorian-era tales of female self-discovery, or reinterpretation of Austen's work into the tone of a contemporary youth romance. Emma succeeds delightfully in the second category.

Direct...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

Leigh Whannell is one of the most exciting directors working at the moment, and those who have not yet seen his expertly crafted 2018 B-movie Upgrade should check it out. Whannell got his start writing and starring in the Saw franchise before penning Insidious and the Clint Eastwood property The Mule. Based on the 1897 H.G. Wells novel, The Invisible Man likely would have looked much different had the 2017 remake of The Mummy with Tom Cruise not tanked. Universal Studios intended to restart its Dark Universe, with film...Read the entire review

THE FILM:

British director Guy Ritchie has been a busy man over the last several years, churning out several big-budget films, including a live-action update of Disney's Aladdin, which I enjoyed; The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which made little impression despite an impressive cast; and the big ole unnecessary mess that is King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Ritchie jumped on the scene around the new millennium and became known for his British action-crime comedies like Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels and Read the entire review

Doctor John Dolittle, the guy who "talks to the animals," is given another cinematic go-round with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role. This time they haven't tried to remake what's come before, but start roughly a few years after the 1967 movie ended. We find out that his wife Lily (Kasia Smutniak) took off on an adventure with John at home at their sprawling Dolittle Manor, and ended up killed along the way. This devastated him causing him to stop his business, close the gates and become a recluse among his animal residents. One day two kids barge in on him- Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado), the daughter of Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley), tracks him down because the queen has suddenly fallen ill and is asking him to come up with a cure. Unfortunately that becomes the first big fault of this movie- Dr. Dolittle is known for being an an...Read the entire review

The Movie:

I had heard about some things about 1917 before it made a plunge into the awards season, that a lot of people seemed to like it either because or in spite of its real-time, one shot nature. Or that it could not overcome this hurdle, but was still getting a lot of awards season praise. I had seen the trailer and was impressed, but there are only so many hours in the day, until one day when you're forced to sit at home and fill that time and thus, as a war film devotee, it appeared in my hands!

Sam Mendes (Spectre), from a story that was told to his grandfather and eventually reached his ears. Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay, Captain Fantastic) and Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman, Read the entire review

THE FILM:

As I mentioned in my review of Ford v Ferrari, I have been lousy at getting to the theater of late. When I started watching Queen & Slim on 4K Ultra HD I was surprised at the events that unfolded. I had an idea of the film in my head, but this is certainly not the film I was expecting. If I figure out what movie I was confusing it for, I will let you guys know. The movie I got is nicely acted and shot, with music and a vibe that reminds me a bit of Craig Brewer's Hustle & Flow, albeit with a more somber and controversial subject matter. After an awkward Tinder date, Slim (Daniel Kaluuya) drives home his date, defense attorney Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith). They are stopped by a police officer, and the situat...Read the entire review

Slavery was a shameful period in our nation's history, and has been continuously taught in hopes that it will never happen again (those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it). The story of Harriet Tubman, a slave who fought for the freedom of not just herself but others, was told many times in school, and it's interesting that this hasn't been considered for a movie until now. Harriet is played by Cynthia Erivo, given the name "Minty" as a slave. She and her family are slaves on the Brodess farm, but she is married to a freed black man named John (Zackary Momoh) who tries to get Harriet freed by legal means. There are also provisions that Harriet's other family members are to be freed at a certain point, but Mr. Brodess (Michael Marunde, doing a rather stereotypical bad-guy performance) flatly refuses to consider or honor any of that. This is when we find out that Harriet, at least as portr...Read the entire review

The Movie:

The legal procedural is something film goers have had no qualms devouring for years now, be it Julia Roberts' push-up bra in Erin Brockovich or George Clooney's crisis of conscience in Michael Clayton. The latest entrant into this genre features an ensemble with talented leading names, though ones whose political ideology tends to speak for themselves.

Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan (The Kingdom) adapted the Nathaniel Rich New York Times Magazine article into a screenplay that Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven) directed. Mark Ruffalo (Foxca...Read the entire review

What Universal didn't understand with their wildly miscalculated Dark Universe, an attempt to ape the MCU by adapting the 1930s Universal Monster movies into big budget tentpoles, is that the originals, as grand and fantastical as they may be, thrived on small scale and intimate terror. Expanding the budget a hundred times and cranking up the action strips the chill factor from these tales, as evidenced by 2017's "inaugural" Dark Universe disaster, The Mummy, which shut down the whole cinematic universe shebang before it barely started. Desperate to squeeze any last drop from this franchise for some reason, Universal decided to start from scratch once again with a lower-budget, cerebral slow-burn horror approach, wisely bringing in producer Jason Blum's unique talents for serving b-horror with a prestige finish.

Their first entry is a metoo-era modernized adaptation of The Invisib...Read the entire review