Movie Reviews
Movie Reviews

Silent Night movie review & film summary (2023)

Nobody speaks a full word of written dialogue. Characters grunt when they crash against a wall, get punched in the gut, or are struck by a car. They gasp or scream when they’re shot or tortured. You hear sound effects and soundscape noises throughout, such as wind, rain, footsteps, and traffic. There are pop songs with lyrics on the soundtrack, interspersed with

Read More
Movie Reviews

Pianoforte movie review & film summary (2023)

The Chopin Competition takes place over 21 grueling days, and Piatek effectively compresses the stress and stamina of those hours into about 90 minutes of runtime. The pacing of “Pianoforte” hops and skips between quick cutting montages of the pianists in performance, their fingers expertly and vigorously striking keys, music thunderously occupying the sequences, and

Read More
Movie Reviews

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Feels Like Treading Water | Video Games

And here’s where things get tricky. The launch maps rule. Certainly more than the launch maps for the last two releases. They’re classics for a reason, and the biggest problem with the multiplayer offerings in recent “CoD” editions has been map design. So, yes, it’s all overly familiar and over-priced, but it’s also a better

Read More
Movie Reviews

Maestro movie review & film summary (2023)

Lenny’s relationship with Felicia was complicated, yet “Maestro” rarely digs far beyond the surface. The two share a bubbly, infectious chemistry as they meet and fall in love—and Cooper the director wisely lets these scenes, and later the couple’s arguments, play out in long, single takes. The affection between them feels genuine, and Mulligan is

Read More
Movie Reviews

Against the Tide movie review (2023)

“Against the Tide,” a documentary directed by Sarvnik Kaur, depicts environmental disaster with an intimate lens. It begins with a beginning: a ritual for a newborn child, in which the baby is oiled and instructed that he is a Koli and that he fears nothing. Kaur shoots and edits this movie like a fiction film;

Read More
Movie Reviews

Frybread Face and Me movie review (2023)

Isolated and out of place, Benny finds companionship in the form of his cousin Dawn (Charley Hogan), whom everyone calls Frybread Face because “it’s round and greasy.” At first, their relationship is combative: “Fry” rolls her eyes at the useless Benny, who doesn’t know anything about herding sheep and doesn’t speak a word of Navajo.

Read More
Movie Reviews

Cypher movie review & film summary (2023)

You shouldn’t focus on the plot or its preposterous details when watching “Cypher.” Watch it on your Roku or tablet at home, where you’re not as likely to care about the obvious stylistic clash between the movie’s collage of motion-sickness-inducing handheld camera footage and its hyper-stylized title cards, which divide the movie into chapters with

Read More
Movie Reviews

Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a Phenomenal Stand-Alone Anime Addition | TV/Streaming

“Scott Pilgrim Takes Off” retells the classic story with more loyalty to the source material than the abridged film, and the entire movie cast reprising their roles, O’Malley and co-writer BenDavid Grabinski pull a “Connor’s Wedding,” drastically changing the variables to service a bolder new take with all its familiar players.  The series starts similarly to

Read More
Movie Reviews

Trolls Band Together movie review (2023)

The first “Trolls” movie, released in 2016, was inspired by the ugly-cute dolls with tufts of brushed-up fuzzy hair that were initially popular in the 1960s. The film imagined a candy-colored world of music and happiness, with Anna Kendrick as Poppy, the Troll King’s daughter. She rescues the trolls from giant troll-eating ogres called Bergens

Read More
Movie Reviews

Orlando, My Political Biography movie review (2023)

The film takes an “I am Spartacus” approach to the text, casting an assortment of trans and nonbinary performers as a gallery of incarnations of Orlando or as people who give their first name as Orlando (including Oscar S Miller and Janis Sahraoui), plus one who plays the actual Woolf character. Then it puts them in dramatic or comedic sketches (and

Read More