Category: The Twenty-First Century
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A Star Is Born [2018] ★★★½
Bradley Cooper has managed to do the impossible: take an old-fashioned Hollywood story that’s been done and redone so many times before (in 1937, 1954 and 1976), hire Lady Gaga to play the lead, and turn it into one of the best films of the year. In many ways, “A Star is Born” pays tribute…
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Venom [2018] ★★
First the good news: “Venom” isn’t as bad as some early reviews led me to believe. The “Catwoman” comparison caught me off guard, but now that I’ve seen it, I can definitely vouch for “Venom”. Unlike Halle Berry, Tom Hardy makes a believable Eddie Brock, the everyday reporter who turns into Venom following a lab…
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Night School [2018] ★★½
It’s not original in any way, but “Night School” has the most important ingredient of them all: Kevin Hart. I wasn’t thrilled with the early reviews, but having seen it myself, I can already categorize it as a “guilty pleasure”, the kind you find yourself coming back to every now and then. Hart plays a…
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The House With A Clock In Its Walls [2018] ★★½
If you’ve seen Jack Black in “Goosebumps”, then you probably know what to expect from “The House With a Clock in its Walls”, a fun-filled family film with a dose of “spooky” to keep the adults just as entertained. Black is in top form once again as good old uncle Jonathan, who takes in his…
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Johnny English Strikes Again [2018] ★★
Since it feels rushed and has no real beginning and no end, I’m going to cut right to the chase: “Johnny English Strikes Again” feels like leftovers from the previous films. You can’t convince me that it took 7 years to come up with…this. To be fair, I did laugh a few times, and it’s…
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![Searching [2018] ★★★½](https://tlkabtmovies.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/searching_ver3.jpg?w=509)
Searching [2018] ★★★½
It took 9 months, but the best thriller of the year is finally here. The gripping, nerve-frying suspense in this movie will pin you to your seat. And yet, movies like “Searching” are so easy to get wrong (hello, “Unfriended”, “Friend request” and other films of the same genre). That it manages to take a…
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Final Score [2018] ★½
It baffles me that movies like “Final Score” still exist in 2018 on the big screen. This type of action movies should go straight to DVD, where no one can hear you utter the following words “Fuck this movie”. “Final Score” pretty much rips off “Die Hard” and stars WWE’s Dave Bautista as an ex-soldier…
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A Simple Favor [2018] ★★
“Weird” doesn’t even begin to describe “A Simple Favor”. When I first saw the trailer over a month ago, I was instantly hooked. I guess you could describe it as a mix between “Gone Girl” and a Hitchcock movie. That was my first reaction at least. But nothing could have prepared me for one of…
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Capharnaüm [2018] ★★★
It took one film back in 2007 to put Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki on the international map permanently. Now she’s back with a new film that’s unlike anything she’s done before. “Capharnaüm” is Labaki’s third feature film as a director, and she shot it in documentary-like fashion, making us believe her “actors” aren’t playing characters…
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The Predator [2018] ★★½
I gotta be honest with you folks: I didn’t expect to have so much fun with this movie. While the original 1987 film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger is highly regarded as a classic in the action genre, the sequels/spinoffs were pretty terrible (except 2010’s “Predators” which was pretty entertaining). Enter director Shane Black, who, incidentally, has…
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Peppermint [2018] ★★
I left the theater wondering if this movie should have been a TV series instead. There is enough material here to fill out a 10-episode Netflix show, which makes the movie itself feel oddly unfinished. But at least I can start on a positive note: Jennifer Garner is well-cast as a mother who witnesses the…
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Classic Movies I Don’t Love
I haven’t written anything controversial ever since fanboys messaged me for hating on 2014’s “Godzilla”, so I thought it would be a good idea to tackle something that has been on my mind for a while now: what are some classic movies that I don’t personally love? Don’t get me wrong, most of the films I’m…
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Alpha [2018] ★★½
It’s an age old tale: prehistoric man meets man’s best friend for the very first time, and the rest, as they say, is history. That’s the story at the core of “Alpha”, a familiar but visually stunning film that has to be experienced on the biggest screen possible. Director Albert Hughes knows that his material…
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Destination Wedding [2018] ★★
It wouldn’t be completely unfair to say that this movie has no reason to exist except to showcase two of Hollywood’s most beloved actors of the 90’s: Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder. These two have been friends for 30 years and appeared in several movies together. But “Destination Wedding”, written and directed by Victor Levin,…
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Ranking The Harry Potter Movies
I love Harry Potter. I love Hogwarts. I love that I got to spend a decade with all these characters. I don’t pretend to know every tiny detail about the movies, but I’ve been enjoying them ever since I was a teenager, and I thought it would be fun to rank them, now that I’m…
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Papillon [2018] ★★★
Here’s a pleasant surprise: a remake that doesn’t suck. It would be easy to dismiss it at first as an updated version that has no reason to exist, but once you warm up to it, it’s just as brutal and poignant as the 1973 classic starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The “heroes” this time…
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Terrible Sequels That Shouldn’t Exist
I call it the “curse of the sequels”. It’s not always valid (case in point: “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Godfather Part 2”, but quite often, these sequels are so bad they shouldn’t even exist. Let’s look at some of my personal favorites. Taken 3 (2015) Following a hugely entertaining first film and a somehow…
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Justice League [2017] ★★½
Forgive me fanboys for I have sinned: I didn’t see “Justice League” upon its release, and it took a long plane ride to Canada to convince me to watch it. Early reviews weren’t too encouraging, to say the least, but now that the dust has settled, it’s interesting to look at “Justice League” from a…
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Bad Movies I Enjoy Watching
We all have one of those. Maybe more. Some might call them “guilty pleasures”, but they’re pretty bad as far as I’m concerned. But the kind of bad that I enjoy revisiting every now and then. Feel free to share your list of “Bad movies you enjoy watching”! Mortal Kombat (1995) It’s bad.…
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Netflix Movies I couldn’t finish watching
I like Netflix. I’m not here to rant or to provide you with anti-Netflix arguments. I’ve been watching series on it more than ever before and I always enjoy browsing their film library. But recently, and for the first time ever, I had to turn off three movies before they even ended. Why bother dropping…
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