Movie Reviews

The ultimate in low-budget filmmaking and the ultimate in storytelling, Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (Japanese title: Droste no hate de bokura) absolutely shellacks most major productions with a simple, low-key conceit and absolutely wows with its execution. The movie adheres to its own rules – until an appropriate time – and boasts a lively spirit […]

Some years ago, I hailed novice Tristan James Jensen for being a startling talent at such a young age; his memorable film The Unearthing remains evidence of how good a first-time writer/director can come out of nowhere to land a solid punch. His compositions, pacing, narrative style, and content spoke of someone who’s studied the […]

Either I’m getting old and sentimental, or the Hotel Transylvania movies are getting better as the series goes on. Whether or not it has to do with the absences of series director Genndy Tartakovsky (who steps into co-writing and executive producing roles) and star Adam Sandler (replaced by Brian Hull in this movie), the series […]

Honestly, there’s nothing in The 355 you haven’t seen anywhere else, and probably done better. Picture the two loggerhead characters from Guy Ritchie’s superlative The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and the exact plots from Phil Alden Robinson’s Sneakers and Susannah Fogel’s The Spy Who Dumped Me all thrown into the spin cycle, and you’ve got The […]

Paul Thomas Anderson’s films are marvelous for one reason: the offhand way random events happen in his movies. A suicide jumper gets shot while falling? Yup. A drug deal where the tension is augmented by a preteen kid chucking firecrackers around a house? In Anderson’s world, it’s an ordinary nighttime scene in Los Angeles. A […]

2016’s Sing can be considered “The Greatest Hits of Every Children’s Film Ever.” You’ve got a disparate set of anthropomorphized animals brought together by a ringleader-type desperate to achieve a certain goal, and each of these folks has to deal with something holding them back from being who they truly want to be. As must […]