movie reviews
Movie Review: The Dead Don’t Die
4.5 stars out of 5 Yes, I respond very positively to movies that are well-made and entertaining. But when a film also appeals to your own bizarro subset of sensibilities, that’s a rare and special thing, and that’s what The Dead Don’t Die is to me. Either independent movies used to be quirkier or I […]
Movie Review: Godzilla — King of the Monsters
4 out of 5 stars As the very beginning flashes back to 2014, I wondered if I was watching a sequel to some Godzilla movie I’d never seen. Later, when David Strathairn shows up as a serious military dude, I thought, “Hmm, I do vaguely remember him as a serious military dude,” and worried that […]
Movie Review: The Souvenir
3.5 stars out of 5 Two generations of Swintons? Count me in! Tilda has a relatively small role in this, but it’s all about her daughter Honor Swinton Byrne. She plays 24-year-old Julie who wants to make films. Ah, but not about her relatively comfortable existence; she’d rather focus on a boy in the northern […]
Movie Review: Asbury Park—Riot, Redemption, Rock ‘n Roll
4 stars out of 5The story goes that, a couple of years ago, Mr. Bruce Springsteen saw a rough cut of this documentary and said, “I should be in this.” His ample included commentary in the finished version certainly lends the film some legitimacy and authority, but the story presented here is worth telling regardless. […]
Movie Review: Avengers — Endgame
3.5 stars out of 5 OMG it’s the final final final — don’t be a sucker, it’s not the final anything. Sure, maybe some actors’ contracts are up and besides, nobody wants superheroes who are too long in the tooth, so… “Endgame.” This is a mostly very enjoyable movie but by no means whatsoever is […]
Movie Review: Teen Spirit
2.5 stars out of 5 I first saw Elle Fanning in 2006’s I Want Someone To Eat Cheese With. Next, I singled out her strong performance in my review of Super 8 in 2011, and then in Trumbo (2015) I noticed she was growing up. I figured the first time I’d see her as the […]
Movie Review: High Life
4 stars out of 5 I’m sort of an R-Patz completist, so you knew I was going to see this film. OK, actually, the only thing I’ve ever seen Robert Pattinson in before was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in which he portrayed Cedric Diggory, and I didn’t know that until about 3 […]
Movie Review: Dumbo
4 stars out of 5 I have only the vaguest childhood memories of Dumbo. Thanks to the “Disney Vault” philosophy and what age you were during re-releases in those pre-home video days, you might be too young, too old, or just right for various animated classics. I’m not sure whether my family went to the […]
Movie Review: Us
4.5 stars out of 5 For those of you who don’t know, this is the theatrical version of the hit television drama series This Is Us. So if you love that show, just go see this movie, don’t read anything else about it, it has all your favorite characters and you’ll have a good old-fashioned […]
Movie Review: Captain Marvel
3 stars out of 5 The first comic book I ever owned was Captain Marvel. My grandma had died, we had to fly back from California to New York for the funeral, and somebody had the smart idea to buy me a comic book to keep me occupied. (It worked; I remember the cover of […]
Jack Silbert, curator