Category: Movie Reviews

  • The Toxic Avenger

    The Toxic Avenger

    4 outta 5 The Toxic Avenger is very silly, gross, horrific, messed up, squishy, dark, comedic and worthy of the Toxic Avenger mantle. The original 1984 film is a cult classic that is more of a gory revenge film than a comedy (although it does get incredibly dopey at times), this is more comedic, but…

  • Nobody 2

    Nobody 2

    4 outta 5 Nobody 2 is a fun return to the world of Hutch Mansell and family. It may be missing the shock of the new that jolted the first one (even if it was inherently just sort of a riff on John Wick) but there is some great action here, and the lead performances…

  • Weapons

    Weapons

    5 outta 5 Weapons is a very intense, messy, weird and gory horror film about grief and scapegoating and family. It is sort of a zombie movie crossed with a possession film with witchcraft horror along with some relationship drama and characters spiraling out. There are a lot of incredibly creepy visuals which keeps the…

  • The Naked Gun

    The Naked Gun

    4 outta 5 It has been quite a while since the last Naked Gun film, but the franchise has laid dormant for so long probably because it was tied up with the iconic performance of Leslie Nielsen. He is great and those movies are great, as they are dumb but consistently hilarious. Getting Liam Neeson…

  • Fantastic Four: First Steps

    Fantastic Four: First Steps

    5 outta 5 After three 20th Century Fox movies and one buried Roger Corman film, the 4th version of Marvel’s First Family in Fantastic Four: First Steps absolutely nails it. It is fairly disconnected from the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe (despite that teaser at the end of Thunderbolts*) and has its own unique vibe. This…

  • Fant4stic (2015 review)

    Fant4stic (2015 review)

    2 outta 5 In the long, long ago of the early 1990s, there was a movie called The Fantastic Four that was made simply so a studio could hang onto the license.  Now history repeats itself.  The primary reason the most recent Fantastic Four film exists is so another movie studio, 20th Century Fox, can…

  • Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (’07 review)

    Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (’07 review)

    1 outta 5 When I sat down to watch Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, I thought “Okay, Director Tim Story, try and wow me.”  This was a cynical response to having suffered through the original Fantastic Four movie.  However, shockingly, the opening of this sequel immediately wowed me.  The first shot involves a…

  • Fantastic Four (2005 review)

    Fantastic Four (2005 review)

    2 outta 5 Fantastic Four is a cookie-cutter superhero movie. Insert Origin Plot A, mix liberally with a climatic fight with supervillian Plot B, stir and serve. There’s hardly any superheroing done in the flick until the very end. Nothing is driving the movie, aside from a laundry list of explanations about superpowers, complaints about…

  • Heads of State

    Heads of State

    3 outta 5 As far as action buddy comedies go, Heads of State is one of the more unique ones as it’s amusingly involving the action-comedy antics of particularly bulky President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the UK. What gives this film a pass is the entertainingly shouty dynamic of the…

  • Superman

    Superman

    4 outta 5 As the world continues to spin, a newly rebooted Superman film is upon us once again, but happily this Superman is great. There are a lot of super characters throughout the film, but they are supporting characters (aside from one or two gratuitous cameos) so it doesn’t feel like overwhelmingly enforced superhero…