Reviews

A standard sports biographical story that is filled with cliches, yet, strives with strong waves with a wonderful performance from Daisy Ridley.

Sports biographical picks have become tame and shallow that its cliches and predictableness are apparently clear from the start. Despite this narrative about Gertrude Ederle being filled with Disney tropes and emotions, its solid atmosphere, gorgeous camerawork, musical score, and strong performances helped keep the tides high and waving with some intense swimming sequences and atmospheres explored. Including some solid strong directions on how its themes, emotions, and atmospheres were approached from filmmaker Joachim Rønning.

Ridley deserves a second chance as she is a pretty good actress, it's unfortunately how the latest Star Wars installment had done her dirty and overshadowed some of the good works she's been in. Nevertheless, a solid sports biographical pick is in the house and I'm happy to see Ridley is still being given opportunities to show her talents. Honestly, one of the better movies made by Disney recently.

This deadpan narrative from Joanna Arnow is a solid deadpan dramatic comedy about a detached character involved with a BDSM relationship and living the life with some interesting direction approaches, deadpan atmospheres, and a solid performance from Joanna herself.

The approach on how life is hard offered by Arnow's direction and approach is a bit strange but it's new level take does offer something special about the setting and concept. Including some dry humor dialogue, structure approaches and character conversations between the performances. Which is also provided by some solid performances from the cast members.

Because some of the writing and pacing is a bit too-slow, it causes the characters to feel distant to connect which at times, made them a bit frustrating to observe, in a not so good way. Nevertheless, I do look forward to see what Arnow could offer next.

Once again, George Miller still manifests an insane, crazed, and crazy piece of art with wonderful thrills and action throughout and captivating atmospheres and energy.

Filled with interesting concepts, Furiosa blends not only with action but a coming of age tale mixed with themes of thriller and revenge that are combined with great uses of colorful production, pacing, and character personalities that are entertaining to observe. Provided with great performances from Anya Taylor-Joy and a perfectly over-the-top performance from Chris Hemsworth.

While I did felt it's climax could have been a bit better, its ambitious sequences and structure maintains a wonderful apocalypse story. You gotta applaud Miller, for being old, yet still maintains to pump out some really interesting and ambitious action sequences and thrills.

This is a bizarre, yet, surreal, heartfelt, and sad coming-of-age tale about media consumption, gender conformity, connections, and identities. While I thought "We're All Going to the World's Fair" was fine, I'm happy to see Jane Schoenbrun being able to shine with an very weird, yet, impressive work of a movie with some great narrative concepts, interesting characters, and colorful atmospheres throughout.

It's exploration within the characters are genuine which are provided with great performances from the cast members alongside with a good score, camerawork, dialogue, and style presentations. The feeling of loneliness, solace, and the society surrounding the characters felt genuine. Many of the dialogue points might be considered awkward or dull but it's setting and atmosphere helps to blend it's realism with surrealist natures. Obviously, this isn't the traditional horror movie and more of a dark depressing coming-of-age tale.

Undeniably, Schoenbrun has potential to become a masterful filmmaker in the near future.

A nice looking children's movie with some good character designs and effects, thus, an uneven story with messages that feel disorganized.

Clearly John Krasinski and the rest of the cast seems to be passionate about this project and while there are some good designs and production, the majority of the movie was pretty boring with uninteresting characters and predictable writing. The writing has the same concept as Foster's Home but unlike the show, it lacks fun characters, charm and humor as this one contains boring characters, uninteresting dynamics, humor, and chemistry, and has pretty poor dialogue.

The performances from the cast members are solid as there are some good live-action and voice performances from the cast but mixed with some pretty bad performances as well. The score is solid but honestly, uninspiring. Because of the performances, it didn't help make any characters interesting and I found myself being a bit annoyed rather than entertained. Overall, seeing this movie makes me just want to watch Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends again.

While at times clunky with it's writing and dialogue, it's stunning visual effects, thrills, direction, and emotional weight of it's core helps maintain an fun, thrilling, and engaging fest of a movie for the Planet of the Apes reboot franchise. Wes Ball's direction on handling the narrative's setting, characters, and themes are solid and many of the special effects, motion capture, sound designs, and costumes are colorful, vibrant, and stunning. Each of the movements and VFX designs are genuinely impressive with their movements and realistic style.

All of the performances are great, especially Owen Teague and Kevin Durand as they perfectly captured their characters personalities and arches. Alongside with the musical score, action sequences, and camerawork. On characters, many of the ape characters were interesting to explore but meantime, the human characters, while have some moments, felt a bit distance to fully connect with.

Despite some of the clunky dialogue, narrative faults, and certain uninteresting characters, its emotional weight, atmosphere, and thrills have surpassed the negatives and ultimately provides a fun flick.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi has made some interesting movies in his career like Drive My Car, Happy Hour, and Asako I & II. While I haven't been wowed by his works, I appreciate many aspects of his style and approach.

Throughout, this movie has some wonderful colorful productions, camerawork, sound designs and atmosphere which helped add layers of the nature landscapes and environment. The narrative provides some interesting themes of nature, conflict of interest, humans and humans vs. Nature issues and explores some interesting aspects that are strong. The performances are all pretty good as well.

However, I am a bit underwhelmed with certain aspects as I found some of the themes feeling a little uneven to work Hamaguchi is wanting to express. Especially when it comes to the characters as while I did found some of the characters interesting, I didn't feel too emotionally connected with their personalities and purpose which made it a bit difficult to fully invest at times.

The soundtrack is wonderful and the dialogue is solid. The film does suffer some pacing issues and with an ending that leaves to many interpretations which may be frustrating for some. Overall, despite it's flaws, it's mediative and nature experience made this movie pretty good.

I like stories where characters are living with a specific situation and being able to discover new things around life and Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry does a good character study drama with sweet atmospheres, good camerawork, wry humor, and good performance from Eka Chavleishvili.

Throughout, the camerawork is purposeful with colorful production and settings. The direction from the filmmaker was solid on capturing the tone, narrative structure, and concepts throughout as well. All in all it's a good sweet movie. Georgian cinema isn't something I talk much from but it was nice to see a movie from Georgia.

Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho once again strikes with another good joint as this being a documentary, it's concept about the nostalgia of old cinema, especially Brazilian cinema, and from an personal lens, provides a strong sense of realism and nostalgic vibe throughout the setting.

It is a beautiful movie. Using archival footages and modern footage of today's time, the direction and concepts explored were well-explored and provides some unique facts, information, and feels about old cinema and how it resonate with Filho. While not everything worked for me, I found myself continuing to enjoy more works from Filho.

Iran cinema has continued to impress me with their ambitious atmospheres, stories, writing, and concepts and this movie is another masterful work.

Presented using interesting setting structures and direction approaches, many of the themes of authority over people and gender problems are well-explored with being mixed of both serious and satirical tones that are strong and appropriate. Many of the dialogue between the characters are amazing and nature, the performances from the cast are great, and the writing and camerawork is honestly great. The filmmaker succeeds on presenting the issues woman and people face in Iran with it's ambitious themes and the style choices and sound designs felt purposeful.

For a short run-time, it succeeds with many moments. Another Iranian masterpiece to add.

Brazil has an interesting history when it comes to the discussions about the tribal communities and their culture, lifestyles, and history. The filmmakers has an interesting but strange approach on exploring the stories about the Kraho communities but with colorful camerawork, good sound designs, observations, and interesting themes being explored, it creates a really good meditative and informed story about the cultures, communities, and the conflicts happening at the same time.

Filmmakers João Salaviza and Renée Nader Messora pay respect to the community by providing interesting conversations with the characters, some emotional and engaging aspects about the conflicts of freedom, the people, and the controls happening, and the beautiful sound designs throughout the woods that helps to add the atmosphere and tone.

Many of the style and presentation choices remains me of Apichatpong Weerasethakul which I say is the biggest fault since it takes a bit too much influence from his style. But as a whole, I found myself being floored and wowed with this movie. Definitely a slow-burn but worth it.

An interesting premise about mathematicians, solutions, experience, and autonomy with a strong lead performance from Ella Rumpf. Concepts about mathematicians and the solutions to solve them aren't something I am very familiar with but the idea of how it process is interesting. Filmmaker Anna Novion does a pretty good job on presenting the direction of the atmosphere, tone, and camerawork as there are some really interesting camera shots and presentations.

With good performances, Rumpf's performance as the main lead is pretty good as she presents an interesting, while at times, noisy, character study that is engaging to observe. Unfortunately, the fault of the movie lies on it's uneven narrative and themes approached. It's narrative explores some interesting concepts about errors and discovery but unfortunately, it lands onto some cliches that are boring and providing some side characters that have little development or engagement to connect with. Creating the movie to lose it's steam.

Nevertheless, for mathematician individuals, this movie will do good for the demographic.

Look, I loved reading the Garfield comics growing up but unfortunately despite a few good moments, it's a bad hairball.

The animation is solid with cute character designs that reflect perfectly to the Garfield comics, setting and environment with good uses of colors, lighting and background designs. The sound design and the soundtrack is pretty good. But that's about it. Storywise, it's messy I suppose. Garfield and Odie are interesting characters however, the movie doesn't give them enough time to shine and includes new characters that are uninteresting and quite unbearable.

The voice performances were okay but Chris Pratt's voice performance is one of the most dullest and lifeless performances ever. I don't dislike Pratt as he's been in some great movies but as Garfield, he really is miscasted.

Sure, there are some okay humor moments and there are some parts that I thought were pretty interesting. But that's all I can say. I brought a few of my relatives siblings to tag along and they enjoyed it, so there's a plus.

Mark Dindal, you made The Emperor's New Groove and Cat's Don't Dance, you can do better then this! Oh wait, you made Chicken Little, never mind.

Baloji Tshiani's approach on it's unconventional narrative structure and style can be a turn off for majority of the views but Tshiani's direction on it's unconventional narrative, atmosphere, and style was an interesting and fascinating outlook on the themes about failures to reconnect, folklore, rituals and cultures with interesting colorful productions, atmospheres, camerawork, musical soundtrack, and character dynamics.

Kinshasa culture is well-explored throughout the narrative, and Tshiani's approach to the characters, themes, and concepts are quite fascinating to explore. With good performances and structures, even with it's short run-time, it treats us with lots of interesting and engaging aspects that I appreciate.

Jesus, you can't make this nonsense up can you? Sam Taylor-Johnson "I have no talent but look! I'm able to exploit Amy Winehouse to show I actually can make something and I'm not just a creep", Mitch Winehouse, involved in a dull, yet, generic piece made for naive audiences, to demonstrate that he isn't a greedy sack of garbage and society needs to know he is innocent. Try to make another unnecessary biopic story that really is just disrespectful. After all, we are not just exploiting someone's legacy, we're changing lives and showing the good parts? I guess that's the lesson of this movie?

Bull****

I feel bad for all the actors. Marisa Abela, Jack O'Connell, Eddie Marsan and Lesley Manville deserve so much better. Anyways, ,watch "Amy (2015)", it's a great emotional documentary.

I'm just going to get this out. Clearly I am not big on David Leitch as a filmmaker but a stuntman, he is excellent with stunt work. Leitch is wonderful with his stunt works but having seen Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, Bullet Train, and Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, it's clear his direction on the action is great but writing, humor, and chemistry is bad.

Throughout, there are some pretty good action thrills and stunt work used to create tension and excitement. The production costumes and designs look nice and the perofmrnaues from Ryan Gosling and the rest of the cast are pretty good. But that's about it really.

Storywise, it's just the typical average action movie Hollywood make. Something ChatGPT would write honestly. But at least it seemed there was some care and thought put into it. The humor is pretty bad and the characters, surprisingly, I didn't buy into their chemistry. Blunt and Gosling are actors I like but the chemistry between one another felt pretty lacking.

Thus, I find myself feeling bored half of the time.

This movie isn't afraid to explore intimate, exotic, and conflicting dynamics in the sports genre and with Luca Guadagnino's wonderful direction, the writing, the performances, the characters, and atmospheres are wonderful and well-executed. The exploration of the characters, their dynamics, and dialogue are great with every single moment feeling tense, engaging, and quite raw. Tennis isn't something I like but man was I invested with this movie.

All of the performances are great including strong chemistry, the soundtrack is wonderful, and many of the sport moments, editing, and style is so gritty, it's wonderful. Stellar camerawork as well! As mentioned, the characters are interesting and while they aren't really relatable, their dynamics and personalities have made them become an interesting character study of a movie. The soundtrack is awesome. I have heard others complaining about the soundtrack but I personally think the soundtrack fits and worked well with the scenes.

It's edging, hot, steamy, tense, and out there. The only issue I have with the movie is that certain sound designs were a little too mute to hear. But otherwise, Guadagnino does it again.

Previously Alex Lutz created "Guy" which I thought was solid with some good concepts and dialogue. Strangers by Night is a typical romance French story but with some solid moments of good dialogue and direction.

Lutz direction on the dialogue, setting and tone is pretty good as it felt focused. The performances are good, while nothing amazing, they were mainly pretty good on emotions. However, the narrative really isn't special as it was pretty predictable, including a twist that was predictable miles away. Some of the dialogue is a little rough, some pacing could be better, and it's clear Lutz has taken too much influence on Richard Linklater's The Before Trilogy which ends up making it feel stale at the end.

Overall, not bad but it's watchable for one time.

Filmed in Cameroon, filmmaker Rosine Mbakam presents a neorealist approach on the life of the main character, Pierrette Abohe, and her struggles to care for her family in the poor and troubling environment. With good camerawork and sound designs, Abohe offers an emotional, slow-burn, but sensitive narrative of Abohe's struggles with interesting dynamics, atmosphere, and realistic dialogue and emotions explored within the character.

Using a docudrama approached, the style, sound designs, and character interactions felt real, touching, and depressing to observe as watching a mother trying to do her best despite the hardships was pretty emotional. The conflicts of the country, the environment, and struggles are well-explored throughout and focusing our main lead was interesting.

Some may call this misery porn but I disagree because misery porn would be considered a film that has a messaged that is forced or purposefully depressing to create shock value, rather then telling a message or so forth.

Overall, I really engaged with this movie.

If you want to see four people dressed up as bigfoot making grunting noises, eating, throwing poop, acting horny, aggressively grunting and a movie that is weird, gross, and bizarre, this is the movie for you.

The Zellner brothers literally made a movie that is just feels like a troll or something of a s**tpost made on youtube, but you know what, I love it.

The humor is gross, weird, and bizarre but I found myself laughing quite a bit for just how out there the movie is. Including it's wonderful soundtrack, gorgeous camerawork, strange performances and surprising, social commentaries explored (if you think of the movie too deeply).

The fact this movie was released in over 800 theaters is wild. Truth be told, people will hate this movie and there were quite a bit of audiences in my theater who walked out

Realistically I don't know what to properly rate this movie but screw it, it's a 10/10 for me.

Imagine you make a Looney Tunes cartoon but turn it into real life, this is what you are going to get. The amusement and the insanity this movie takes it purely amazing with each single moment being extremely entertaining, hilarious and wild for it's stake of time.

The visual gags, presentation, and style is low budget but it greatly captures the humor, essence and insanity of what is Looney Tunes and the old classic slapstick humor from the silent era was. With great visual gags, hilarious banters, and intentional weird costume choices, this movie achieves what makes everything funny, hilarious and wild.

I don't think I have ever seen a movie like this in my life but here we are.

This movie reminds me a lot of the early children adventures movies I have grown up watching as a kid. A story about adventures, fantasy, friendship, and the journey to find something. Using 16mm film, the filmmaker perfectly captures the essence of children fairytale adventures with gorgeous looking production, camerawork, soundtrack, and really good child performances from the cast members.

The writing and the themes explored fits very well with the setting and direction. Many of the choices made feel childish and strange but it is intentional as it helps add the child-like adventures and craziness that we kids would go through to seek an adventure. With the characters being pretty fun to observe, many of the child performances are really good with each feeling nature and realistic of what how children really act and speak.

Although, it isn't a perfect movie. For a runtime of 114 minutes, it does feel tedious and some of the pacing really did drag the movie that made me zone out a little during the second act. But as a whole, I appreciate the filmmaker being able to capture the tone and atmosphere very well and it's definitely a project that he is passionate about.

But I definitely will be keeping an eye on this director.

Beautiful camerawork, production, and the filmmaker Vladimir Perisic is providing interesting themes of politics and the time period of Serbia. Unfortunately, it fails to fully achieve it's success with an narrative that feels too lost to focus on it's message.

Serbian culture and it's politics isn't something I am familiar with and to make movies from their perspectives is interesting. As mentioned the camerawork, production designs and some of the concepts explored are pretty interesting and helps to establish it's time period and setting. Unfortunately, the narrative, while does offer some interesting concepts, fails because it doesn't fully grasp well with it's themes and proceeds to feel aimless and flying around like nothing. Including characters that felt too-staged that it loses it's sense of realism and purpose.

The performances weren't the greatest. Jasna Djuricic gives the best performance in the movie but the main lead, Jovan Ginic, tries but it just wasn't good enough to fully develop the role's emotions and their strengths. The worse aspect is the dialogue. Man, the dialogue clearly feels like it was written by someone who doesn't understand human communication and it feels like something ChatGPT would have written down.

It's unfortunate cause this movie does have something hidden somewhere that could be amazing and great but fails because of the lifeless writing, undeveloped characters, and it's repetitive nature. Failing to become a good art-house movie.

I really love the interesting perspective and takes of this movie. From the uses of journalists perspectives during a war between nations, filmmaker Alex Garland captures what journalism, tension, and war can be with strong directing, tension, effects, writing, and atmosphere throughout.

The narrative offers some themes and dynamics which creates some interesting characters, action moments, effects, and tension throughout. I am not a political person at all but I found myself enjoying many of the creative concepts and dystopian aspects explored. The performances from the cast members are great especially Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura and Cailee Spaeny as many of the performances were great. Including the characters being interesting and some pretty good dialogue.

The atmosphere and themes are well-explored, the sound designs and many of the practical effects are wonderful and having seen it in IMAX, it really helps add the environment and tension. Alongside with it's political themes and chaos that helps to add the atmosphere and setting. I do say the only biggest issue I have with the movie is that there is one character moment towards the third act that is a bit strange.

But overall, I can see people might hate this one especially for political people or crazed commenters but I really loved this movie. If this really is Alex Garland's last movie, then he will be missed.

Italian cinema is pretty interesting as Italy has crafted some of the most genuine and masterful works of art in the past history of cinema. While modern Italian works haven't been big for me, La Chimera is an interesting story with interesting choices of direction from Alice Rohrwacher, beautiful camerawork, writing and performances from the cast members. It's universe the movie settles itself is dream-like, bizarre, and quite engaging with the direction and camerawork guiding the narrative throughout.

Including some interesting music choices and performances that are wonderful. Since it is a slow-burn setting, there are some pacing issues that made me feel a bit disconnected with it's characters and certain aspects that could have been explored a bit more. It's undeniably an creative approach of modern Italian cinema and Rohrwacher has the potential to craft some amazing potential masterpieces for Italian cinema in the near future.