Film

Ghostlight a sincere beacon of hope Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson’s Ghostlight is prime fodder for nitpickers. It has its narrative flaws, and I would be the first to admit that key moments would likely never happen.  And yet, I’m glad that I haven’t gotten so old and bitter that I take a hypercritical look […]

Inside Out 2 an imaginative, witty and insightful classic What has made the Pixar films the gold standard of modern animation is their ability to not only dazzle us with their imaginative visuals and tickle our funny bones with their unique characters, but their ability to push us toward introspection. Inside Out 2 achieves this […]

Powell shines in clever Hitman Directed by Richard Linklater, Hitman is an inspired-by-fact dark comedy that gives Glen Powell the opportunity to show his range and make the case he’s worthy of the great expectations surrounding him. Employing a wry tone from the start, we see meek professor Gary Johnson (Powell) thrown into a dangerous […]

Miller’s Furiosa hums along in a different gear George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is a solid action epic that, while it manages to deliver a twisted story and the kinetic aesthetic we’ve come to expect from him, falls short of the ground-breaking effort the filmmaker delivered with Mad Max: Fury Road. To be […]

Krasinski’s If an over-calculated misfire Scattered and confused, John Krasinski’s If is a misfire from start to finish, a film that promotes itself as a heart-warming fable yet comes off as overcalculated and obvious. Confusing and incomplete, the movie is nothing more than a collection of disjointed ideas that never coalesce into anything fully formed […]

Curious pacing mars Kingdom For a tentpole movie, Wes Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is a rather daring film that in some ways plays against “apectations” (sorry, couldn’t resist…). Deliberately paced, at times it seems as if the director is daring us to stay interested in this, the 10th film in the […]

Gosling and Blunt keep Guy on track David Leitch’s The Fall Guy is a true tribute to the stunt performers who risk life and limb to make their on-screen counterparts look good. A former stuntman himself, the director’s inside knowledge proves invaluable in bringing not simply a verisimilitude to the film but an appreciation for […]

Though I was physically exhausted at the end of the fourth day, I was culturally rejuvenated once the 15th Annual Turner Classic Movies Film Festival wrapped up. Seeing classic movies in period film palaces reminded me of the power of cinema as well as the joy that comes from seeing them with an appreciative and […]

Less-is-more approach helps Hero Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man is poor who has a Godly mother.” Truer words were never spoken where the Smallbone family is concerned. The matriarch of the family, Helen, held her family together after her husband’s business failed and their house was foreclosed on, then moved to the United States […]