Category: Movie Reviews
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Barbie
5 outta 5 Barbie is a licensed toy adaptation that both celebrates yet, at times quite savagely, parodies the toy brand it is based on. There was always a slightly unsettling, too perfect vibe about Barbie’s world which this movie uses for great effect. The performances are all hilarious with some little snippets of humanity…
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Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
4 outta 5 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One increases the epic scope of the Mission: Impossible series and, as the series has already been epic in scope, that’s saying something. The Mission movies are pushing about 30 years at this point (the first flick came out in ’96!) so upping the spectacle in…
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Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (’15 review)
3 outta 5 There is a lot of nifty set-pieces and narrative trickery in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. It doesn’t have the Brian De Palma weirdness of the first Impossible, the John Woo slow-motion doves of M:I:2, the heart and kinetic kick of J.J. Abrams’ Mission: Impossible III, or the humorous inventiveness of Brad…
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Mission: Impossible III (’06 review)
4 outta 5 The start of Mission Impossible III, with Philip Seymour Hoffman taunting and threatening a simmering, raging Tom Cruise to an explosive conclusion, is one of those grab-you-by-the-throat openers that automatically commands your attention. With an inventive script and direction by TV wonderkid J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost) MI:III manages to match that opening…
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
4 outta 5 There’s a weird release pattern to the (now five) Indiana Jones movies. The Steven Spielberg directed trilogy ran through the 1980s, and then almost two decades for the 4th movie Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and then another long gap until this fifth and apparently final movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial…
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Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (’08 review)
5 out of 5 The excitement of summer movie season has become diluted with every lame Batman sequel or annoying Speed Racer. Happily, director Steven Spielberg, writer/producer George Lucas, and star Harrison Ford have rejoined to make summer movies awesome again with the fourth Indy adventure, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. …
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Extraction 2
3 outta 5 Extraction 2 certainly delivers some large-scale chaos, which comes in lots of different and incredibly messy forms. There’s prisoner riots, rampaging trains, and buckets of nails to the face. No normal human could survive the amount of punishment that is inflicted here on the main character, but no normal human would be…
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Extraction (’20 review)
4 outta 5 Extraction doesn’t have the balletic kinetic art-house pop action of something like John Wick but it does have exceptionally crunchy and messy skirmishes throughout. Sometimes it is exceptionally grim and tries a bit too hard to add pathos which produces some mixed results. Extraction is at its best as intense single ride…
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The Flash
4 outta 5 The Flash arrives on a wave of behind-the-scenes thespian controversy and unreasonable hype after Warner Bros studio executives in advance proclaimed it one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. Also, 2023 had genuinely great superhero movies like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and just two weeks ago, Spider-Man: Across the…
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Black Adam (’22 review)
3 outta 5 Black Adam, the latest DC superhero movie in the DC Extended Universe, is more of Shazam! sequel than the marketing admits. However, it is somewhat irritating that the Wizard Shazam is here, the magic transformation word “Shazam!” is said a whole bunch but Shazam himself isn’t mentioned or appears. The movie closely…
BigAl Reviews 