When a genre feels played out, or overexposed, filmmakers look for ways to surprise viewers, to bring the genre back to life. So it is and so it shall always be, and that is a good thing, because it prevents […]
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Guns Up (2025) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Far too many movies and television shows (proportionally) are being made about hit men, assassins, organized (or disorganized) crime and gangsters of all sorts, in my view. This type of programming cannot help but glorify and popularize criminal behavior, even […]
Continue reading »Sisu: Road to Revenge (2025) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Aatami is back, in a sequel that isn’t really necessary, but like his first adventure is surprisingly potent. The best aspect (for me, anyway) is that director Jalmari Helander has finally learned to scale back on the preposterousness of some […]
Continue reading »Nobody 2 (2025) ☆ 1/2
Hutch is back, for no good reason I can discern except to make more money for Universal and its production companies. First, some background. For some reason I never reviewed the first Hutch Mansell adventure, Nobody, probably because I saw it […]
Continue reading »Shadow Land (2024) ☆ ☆ ☆
One of my favorite characteristics of cinema is that it can defy one’s expectations. For instance, I didn’t expect to enjoy the political thriller Shadow Land based on what little I knew about it, its poor IMDb rating, its main star […]
Continue reading »M3gan 2.0 (2025) ☆ ☆ ☆
I was a (happily surprised) big fan of M3gan (2022) when I caught up with it, a superbly staged science-fiction / horror cautionary tale regarding the dangers of AI (Artificial Intelligence). This story has stayed with me and I have […]
Continue reading »Three Thousand Years of Longing (2023) ☆ ☆ ☆
While fantasy films often cause me intellectual discomfort, I can be brought around if they are done well. This one is. George Miller’s fable explores the “three wishes” scenario we all know. A scholar (Tilda Swinton) in Istanbul releases a […]
Continue reading »Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) ☆ ☆
Pretty much the whole gang has returned for the third Sonic the Hedgehog entry in this ongoing franchise — which I applaud for maintaining consistency — but the result is also pretty much the same, despite a noticeable deepening of the […]
Continue reading »Thrash (2026) ☆ ☆
I am a sucker for shark films but fully realize that the vast majority of them are not of good quality. Neither is Thrash, which exploits a premise that I have long thought had real promise for such a predatory tale. […]
Continue reading »Hijack ’93 (2024) ☆ ☆ 1/2
One should always keep in mind that movies “based on a true story” can and often do distort the facts of the stories they tell to make points, support an agenda or merely be more entertaining. It is a weakness […]
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