Tag: Movie Reviews
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Hamnet
4 outta 5 Hamnet is sort of a version of Shakespeare in Love but with only a dash of love at the start and then a whole lot of anguish, obsession, mourning with intense closeups of sadness and a lot of actors wailing in emotional pain. This is certainly a heavy experience that does eventually…
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Avatar: Fire and Ash
4 outta 5 With the third Avatar movie, director James Cameron once again delivers a spectacular visual journey into the world of humans and Na’vi. The films have gotten a little less awe inspiring as they’ve gone on and the simplicity of the first film’s story makes it the best. There’s a lot more characters…
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022 review)
4 outta 5 After more than a decade, the sequel to the highest grossing movie of all time arrives with Avatar: The Way of Water. The length of time in between installments basically makes this a legacy sequel, focusing on the next generation. Director James Cameron (Terminator 2, Aliens, Titanic) is very much in love…
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Avatar (2009 review)
4 out of 5 After a more than a decade, James Cameron returns to fiction filmmaking with Avatar. There is the inevitable comparison to Aliens because it’s a Cameron film about marines vs. aliens, but that’s unfair because Aliens is one of the greatest goddamn movies of all time and Avatar . . . isn’t. …
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Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
2 outta 5 Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is a limp entry in the film adaptation of the videogame series. Both films are overtly mopey emo slogs in a series that really should be more concerned about animatronic carnage. It is a sequel to the 2023 film but even in a sequel there should be…
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Wake Up Dead Man
5 outta 5 With the third Knives Out Mystery, writer/director Rian Johnson once again jumps genres, defies expectations, and has a great mystery with Wake Up Dead Man. While the 2nd film, Glass Onion, went full bonkers comedy, this is more of a gothic horror film with ruminations upon faith and control. But there is…
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Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (’22 review)
5 outta 5 Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery is a fantastic sequel to the fantastic original movie, Knives Out. This doesn’t simply repeat the murder mystery formula of the first film, this murder mystery has a unique tone and structure. With a lot of Rian Johnson’s output, like The Last Jedi or Looper, he…
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Knives Out (’19 review)
5 outta 5 Writer and director Rian Johnson (Brick, The Last Jedi) returns with the peppy and hilarious murder mystery Knives Out. Like all his work, this takes a few genre conventions and then twists them on its head unexpectedly, sometimes doing exactly what a murder mystery would do and then swerving. It is sold…
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Sisu: Road to Revenge
4 outta 5 Sisu: Road to Revenge is fun theatrical counter-programing to Wicked for Good. It is probably accurate that Sisu features more bloody mutilations and gunfire. Sisu: Road to Revenge isn’t a film with much depth as this is basically just action and mayhem hung together. But the first Sisu film was basically that…
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The Running Man
4 outta 5 The Running Man is the 2nd adaptation of a Stephen King novel about a dystopian game released in the last few months, the first being The Long Walk, and both novels were published under King’s Richard Bachman pseudonym. Running Man was famously adapted as an ‘80s action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that…