Author: John Dotson

Movie ReviewsReviews

‘The Legend of Ochi’ is Weird, Whimsical, but Familiar

The Legend of Ochi will face challenges upon release. Like The Dark Crystal, the film incorporates puppetry to showcase the mystical creatures in the movie. However, similar to The Dark Crystal, it isn’t easy to visualize a commercial pathway for the film. It has all the elements of a How to Train Your Dragon movie but with the approach of an

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Movie ReviewsReviews

‘The Wedding Banquet’ Review: A Rom-Com with a Big Heart

The Wedding Banquet, as a remake, reintroduces a classic narrative rarely offered by Hollywood lately. The film has a catchy plot where the main leads hatch a scheme, and the more the scheme unfolds, the less it works. Romantic comedies used to do it all the time. For example, How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days permitted Kate Hudson to

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Movie ReviewsReviews

‘Sinners’ Movie Review: A Crowning Achievement for Horror

Sinners as a title may discourage the evangelical audience from seeing the film. Yet, Ryan Coogler has more to say about spiritual warfare than most faith-based movies. His first breakthrough into horror touches on the deeply rooted religious backdrop of the 1930s Mississippi South, where people of color survived a racist landscape through resilience, grit, and the hope of an answered

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Movie ReviewsReviews

‘A Minecraft Movie’: Big Stupid Fun with Possible Side Effects

Jared Hess is one of those filmmakers where the audience will always split down the middle. He thrives on killing the brain cells of the general public. His films push the boundaries of idiocy, and they do so with intentional earnestness. In A Minecraft Movie, characters break out into musical numbers for no reason, Jason Momoa and Jack Black defy the

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‘Warfare’ is a Nightmarishly Immersive War Movie That Transcends

Warfare is not a traditional military film. For most of the movies in the genre, jingoism echoes at the forefront, almost as if they aim to serve as recruitment videos more than pieces of art. Xenophobia is usually a tool to create a villain for the American heroes of the film. For example, American Sniper manufactured a Muslim threat for Bradley

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Movie ReviewsReviews

‘Death of a Unicorn’: A Slapstick Monster Fest for Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega

Death of a Unicorn is a comically unhinged concept. The foundation has all the flavors of an SNL Digital Short or a Robot Chicken segment. The movie finds an existence on one unique question: What if we made a Jurassic Park movie but used unicorns instead of dinosaurs? To increase the insanity, take a wholesome comedic star like Paul Rudd and

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