In the film Havoc, a sweet and concerned wife consoles her grief and anxiety with Detective Walker (played by Tom Hardy). The moment should communicate the painstaking loss happening around the police department as the grieving wife watches her husband fight for his life in a hospital bed. A short while later, a criminal walks into the same hospital room and sprays a
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreThe 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
Read MoreSinners 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
Read MoreJared 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
Read MoreWarfare 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
Read MoreDeath 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
Read MoreThe new A24 film Opus spurs reflections about the recently deceased Gene Hackman. The late actor rarely found a genre he could not improve in some form. Hackman made it a point to flourish in movies like The Birdcage, where the role required him to tackle progressive topics with sincere comedic timing. Similarly, he could navigate a darker role, much like
Read MoreNovocaine would be a starring vehicle for Jim Carrey in a different timeline. In the late ’90s, Carrey was the ruler of physical comedy with an added gimmick. The Mask, Liar Liar, and even Bruce Almighty would beg to question, “What if Jim Carrey but X scenario?” Novocaine is not a starring vehicle for the Ace Ventura actor, but it performs
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