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Godzilla Minus One
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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Blends classic franchise elements with an intense, well-conceived human perspective that gives the film a unique character all its own.
Posted Nov 30, 2023
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3/5
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Flesh and Bone
(1993)
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Nick Rogers
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Four great characters. Four strong turns. The film takes them exactly where you expect, to a mildly meandering detriment. Still, there's authenticity about this slice of America & a staunch swerve away from the sentimental feeling that love conquers all.
Posted Nov 27, 2023
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4.5/5
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Maestro
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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For this Bernstein biopic, Bradley Cooper and company question how much beauty there really can be in the last word next to the flood of them that flows between the start and end. Stunningly rendered, with powerhouse work from Cooper and Carey Mulligan.
Posted Nov 21, 2023
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Tiger 3
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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"Tiger 3" is an essentially perfect delivery of creative action and triumphant ass-beatings on endless hordes of nasty goons.
Posted Nov 21, 2023
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3.5/4
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Kung Fu Panda 2
(2011)
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Nick Rogers
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A cinematic recipe of the hardcore and the heartfelt that, in the hands of the iron chefs DreamWorks Animation has employed to make it, is easy for any age to eat up.
Posted Nov 20, 2023
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3/4
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The Next Three Days
(2010)
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Nick Rogers
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Although no hidden gem, Russell Crowe could’ve done much worse than filling Mel Gibson’s family-man-of-action shoes. And writer-director Paul Haggis thankfully shelves his sociology-degree sermonizing for a pure-pulp prison-break thriller.
Posted Nov 20, 2023
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3/4
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Daybreakers
(2009)
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Nick Rogers
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As a vigorous reclamation of what vampire-genre movies should be, "Daybreakers" is, oh, positive.
Posted Nov 20, 2023
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1/4
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Cop Out
(2010)
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Nick Rogers
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Bruce Willis has teamed with a fast-talking Black comedian in a violent, funny and gloriously R-rated throwback to ’80s buddy-cop action films. That movie was 1991’s "The Last Boy Scout" with Damon Wayans. "Cop Out" is a shockingly inept endurance test.
Posted Nov 20, 2023
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2/4
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Laurel Canyon
(2002)
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Nick Rogers
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Somewhere, there’s an interesting movie to be made that wraps the human condition in with music, psychiatry and fruit fly mating patterns. This isn’t it.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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2.5/4
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Ocean's Twelve
(2004)
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Nick Rogers
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With such a charismatic cast, it’s impossible for "Ocean’s Twelve" to be an awful bore. But it’s an underwhelming case of six of stars, half-a-dozen of the other that doesn’t let everyone, including the audience, in on the fun.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3/4
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Meet the Fockers
(2004)
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Nick Rogers
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Even though it stretches too thin sometimes, "Meet the Fockers" is a sequel that works at levels similar to and different from its source and another comedic meeting you won’t mind taking.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3.5/4
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The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
(2004)
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Nick Rogers
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While it would be nice to be able to laugh a little more (acoustic-guitar versions of David Bowie classics sung in Portuguese only go so far), the film delivers a metaphor for the death of romantic and robust boyhood imagination with great subtlety.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3/4
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Four Brothers
(2005)
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Nick Rogers
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A usually sharp script, a firecracker turn from Chiwetel Ejiofor and a decent amount of suspense and surprise. There are worse directors than John Singleton who have switched focus to B-pictures with the right amount of substance.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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1.5/4
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The Ice Harvest
(2005)
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Nick Rogers
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Harold Ramis has gone from high-concept to no-concept. He confuses bared breasts, broken fingers and blown-out brains for edgy existential comedy in a conventional film-noir story that snappy quips from Oliver Platt and Billy Bob Thornton can’t save.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3/4
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Chicken Little
(2005)
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Nick Rogers
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Kids might see too much silence and thought as something they’d do in a timeout, so the alien frenzy is thrust too far forward. "Chicken Little" still is fun, even if you don’t quite believe all that it’s telling you.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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2/4
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I'm Not There
(2007)
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Nick Rogers
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It could be argued no such film could be made about any other performer than Dylan, so relevant, omnipresent and productive across so many decades. But this shapeless glob about creative tendencies toward contradiction and chaos has no direction home.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3.5/4
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Charlie Wilson's War
(2007)
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Nick Rogers
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A crackling satire about how insanely far political palm-greasing could go just 20 years ago. But its chilling closing quote succinctly sums up just how ideology, infantry and a political disinterest would come back to haunt our nation.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3.5/4
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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
(2007)
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Nick Rogers
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An entertaining piece of graphic poetry. When the blood starts to spurt, sputter and spit, it’s in just the right shade — not so thick and crimson as to be off-putting but not so fake and thin as to have no impact.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3.5/4
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The Good, the Bad, the Weird
(2008)
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Nick Rogers
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The sort of film where people barrel through doors only to be blasted back through them. It also boasts bone-deep brutality in a way that belies its buoyancy but never betrays it — invoking desperation inherent to Manchurian life under multiple thumbs.
Posted Nov 09, 2023
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3.5/4
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Unfaithful
(2002)
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Nick Rogers
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A dark, delusional piece of sultry fantasia that doesn’t condemn or condone Connie or Ed’s choices. It simply presents people surprised by the ease with which they transgress and allow little white lies to fester into gigantic, tumorous deceptions.
Posted Nov 08, 2023
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1.5/5
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The Three Musketeers
(2011)
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Nick Rogers
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Always beautiful to look at but always an empty shell, "The Three Musketeers" is a busy, noisy gobbledygook of random casting, disjointed storytelling, goofy action and dopey dialogue.
Posted Nov 08, 2023
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The Marvels
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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One of the first movies Marvel has put out in a long time that feels willing to be as weird and enjoyably stupid as the genre allows. This might be Marvel's first cult classic.
Posted Nov 08, 2023
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Blue Beetle
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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If audiences still want movies as an art form a few years from now, and we end up with an inevitable wave of nostalgia for superhero films, it seems clear to me this one will be quickly reclaimed as an unsung classic of the genre.
Posted Nov 04, 2023
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2/5
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Nyad
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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Jimmy Chin & Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi are exceptional documentarians well versed in the complexities of the everyday motivations & relationships in extreme sports. Why they pivoted to the boring biopic beats and armchair psychology of "Nyad" is baffling.
Posted Nov 03, 2023
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1.5/5
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Perfect
(1985)
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Nick Rogers
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A DOA romantic drama whose lone cultural legacy is that well-memed GIF of John Travolta thrusting his pelvis in a precariously perched pair of junk-hugging jockeys.
Posted Nov 01, 2023
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3/5
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The Good Mother
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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The whodunit is too simple but Hilary Swank delivers assured notes of anxiety, the cinematography is great, and the script underscores the opportunity costs of chasing clicks, connecting a crumbling infrastructure of information gathering to civic health.
Posted Nov 01, 2023
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3/5
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While the City Sleeps
(1956)
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Nick Rogers
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Fritz Lang’s framing of people in places of power also emphasizes the dizzying speed with which they rise, fall or simply burrow deeper into the building’s basement bar. Too bad the initial pulsing, personal urgency leeches as the narrative loses itself.
Posted Nov 01, 2023
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Godzilla
(1998)
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Evan Dossey
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As someone who subscribes to the notion that there are no bad Godzilla films, I still find the best bits of Godzilla to be good enough to make the entire thing worth sitting through every few years.
Posted Oct 31, 2023
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3/5
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American Ninja 2: The Confrontation
(1987)
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Nick Rogers
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An improvement over its predecessor in every way. The genetically mutated super-ninjas in cryo-sleep look like dudes recruited at a quarter-beer night. The sport-o version of Anthony Edwards plays a base commander. Wall-to-wall action as it should be.
Posted Oct 30, 2023
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2.5/5
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American Ninja
(1985)
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Nick Rogers
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Hilarious, if true, that Chuck Norris balked at what amounts to maybe 10 minutes of director Sam Firstenberg’s 1985 film — C-grade Cannon fodder if there ever was, which is saying something.
Posted Oct 30, 2023
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1/5
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Freelance
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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It will appeal only to those who would march into hell for John Cena, and its content reflects the barren, scorched scenery such fans would discover there — a wasteland of his considerable potential for mugging, making jokes and mowing people down.
Posted Oct 27, 2023
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1.5/5
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Five Nights at Freddy's
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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A five-person writing team (including the game's creator) has conjured what "The Vanishing" or "Prisoners" might look like were it produced by Showbiz Pizza and mandated to subliminally promote purchasing a birthday pizza party package every 10 minutes.
Posted Oct 27, 2023
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Killers of the Flower Moon
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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A story about the banal realities of racism, of evil and of love — all of which can exist simultaneously in the heart of man without any need for the mind to square their inherent contradictions.
Posted Oct 23, 2023
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The Pigeon Tunnel
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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The Pigeon Tunnel may not be a film destined to make headlines like some of Morris' other works, but its focus on the filmmaker’s core themes makes it a deeply satisfying watch for anyone who is a fan of his life’s work.
Posted Oct 22, 2023
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1/5
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Bates Motel
(1987)
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Nick Rogers
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Clearly intended as a pilot for an otherwise unrelated anthology series tangentially attached to popular IP, a la what "Friday the 13th: The Series" or "Freddy’s Nightmares" would become, it's instead the most misbegotten undertaking in franchise history.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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2/5
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Psycho IV: The Beginning
(1990)
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Nick Rogers
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The contemporary conflict of nature versus nurture is rushed. It’s like trying to shoehorn several seasons of "Dexter" into a single film. Ultimately, it’s just some dedicated window-dressing and a milquetoast conclusion to the saga.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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2.5/5
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Psycho III
(1986)
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Nick Rogers
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Spends a lot of time trying to undo its predecessor’s problems. Albeit to a considerably less committed degree, it does as good a job as it can to go somewhere deeper while meeting the ante of lurid thrills.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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3/5
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Psycho II
(1983)
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Nick Rogers
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Simultaneously the franchise's best and most frustrating sequel — complicating the clarity of its interrogation of America's relationship with mental health with a cacophonous and clumsy ending.
Posted Oct 13, 2023
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2/5
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Saw X
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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A lengthy running time is the only difference between this and other disappointing "Saw" sequels of late. In that sense, the franchise's longest installment is its most punitive.
Posted Oct 05, 2023
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2/5
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Reptile
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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A distended dirge of digressions & dream sequences that never distract from equally superficial murder plots & psychological profiles. With respect to Benicio Del Toro & Alicia Silverstone’s previous collaboration, "Excess Baggage" makes more sense here.
Posted Sep 27, 2023
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4/5
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Moonage Daydream
(2022)
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Nick Rogers
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One of the most immersive audiovisual experiences you'll ever have — an enveloping, evocative simulation of what it's like being inside David Bowie's brain and the next best thing to being in the front row to see the Thin White Duke in his prime.
Posted Sep 26, 2023
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3/5
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Striking Distance
(1993)
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Nick Rogers
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The hard truth is that Bruce Willis is just one of many faces going forth here as gamely as possible. And yet for its crude and compromised stitching, "Striking Distance" remains weird, wobbly and eminently watchable.
Posted Sep 26, 2023
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1.5/5
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Expend4bles
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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There are certainly shorter erectile dysfunction advertisements and with more believable settings and backdrops. Forget worrying about an erection that lasts four hours. "Expend4bles" can't even maintain excitement for four minutes.
Posted Sep 22, 2023
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1.5/5
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The Equalizer 3
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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Are you sitting down? Because Denzel Washington sure is in what amounts to a well-shot, on-location version of those sad DTV movies where Steven Seagal largely confines himself to a chair.
Posted Sep 11, 2023
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3/5
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Vacation Friends 2
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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Like its predecessor, it's broad and basic but also funny and sweet. It finds a winning way to thread a needle on contemporary R-rated raunch that is generous to its supporting players and which avoids veering into lazy insults of people or cultures.
Posted Aug 25, 2023
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1.5/5
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Retribution
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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Liam Neeson offers glimpses of gravitas. But if the options are, to quote the slogan of his Mercedes Benz, the best or nothing … you can guess where this one lands. As movies with explosives in vehicles go, it's not "Speed." It's just a bomb on a bust.
Posted Aug 23, 2023
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2/5
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Heart of Stone
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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A deluge of digitally assisted effects cannot distract from dead-end mimicry of every last "Mission: Impossible" film from the last 27 years — including, and especially, the one currently playing in theaters.
Posted Aug 11, 2023
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3/5
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Meg 2: The Trench
(2023)
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Nick Rogers
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The first half passes in a brain-deadening blur of visual illegibility so incomprehensible it's almost impressive. Thankfully, the second half delivers the bonanza of bugnuttery it was born to be and that segment's creature comforts are many.
Posted Aug 05, 2023
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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As delightful an entry in the long-running franchise as one could hope for — re-introducing the quartet of half-shelled heroes for a new generation of kids while keeping things recognizable for adults
Posted Aug 04, 2023
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Shortcomings
(2023)
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Evan Dossey
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Binding what is essentially an anthology of personal misery into an underdeveloped ensemble of much more interesting characters makes for a film more frustrating than not.
Posted Aug 04, 2023
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