Category: The Twenty-First Century
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Hustlers [2019] ★★★
Believe the hype: Jennifer Lopez is sensational in “Hustlers”, playing the leader of a former strip club employees who got their revenge on their Wall Street clients following the crash of 2008. How and why? You’ll have to see for yourself. But I will say that I walked in to see this fact-based movie with…
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Rambo: Last Blood [2019] ★½
Face it: John Rambo was one of the most iconic action heroes of the 20th century. The first three movies were released back in the 1980’s and inspired a generation of action filmmakers. Naturally, Sylvester Stallone would want to give his character a fitting farewell. His 2008 comeback was good, but it never gave us…
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Ad Astra [2019] ★★★½
This is the science-fiction movie we’ve all been waiting for this year. “Ad Astra”, written and directed by James Gray and starring Brad Pitt in one of the best performances of his career, is a knockout from start to finish. Last year, Damien Chazelle’s underappreciated “First Man” celebrated an intimate bond between Neil Armstrong and…
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Tall Girl [2019] ★½
Much like many Netflix movies of the same genre, “Tall Girl” has a one-joke premise that reaches its full potential after 5 minutes. You may have guessed by now that Ava Michelle plays a high school girl who gets constantly bullied for being…well…tall. It’s not a good premise to begin with, and now that I’ve…
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The Goldfinch [2019] ★★½
I don’t know what “The Goldfinch” purists will make out of this big screen adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, but even the best ones tend to fall a bit short, especially in the eyes of those dedicated readers. With that aside, I thought the film version was good enough to justify its existence.…
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It Chapter Two [2019] ★★★
It’s not quite as focused or scary as the first movie, but there’s something truly irresistible about revisiting the small town of Derry, where Pennywise the clown terrorized seven children back in 1989 and gave audiences a run for their money. Now all grown up, our heroes have supposedly moved on, until a mysterious phone…
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Back To School [2019] ★★
This OK french Netflix comedy about two buddies who spend a wild night at their middle school reunion isn’t as bad as it sounds. At just 80 minutes, it has some funny moments here and there and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It does cover familiar grounds, for sure, which means there’s nothing here than you’ve…
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The Perfection [2019] ★★½
A half-decent movie is a rare thing to find on Netflix, so I have to give “The Perfection” credit for keeping me intrigued. I knew absolutely nothing about it prior to seeing it, so it was up to director Richard Shepard and his team of writers to keep me hooked. And at 90 minutes, this…
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Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil And Vile [2019] ★½
A movie about Ted Bundy, the serial killer who caused mayhem during his trial in the late 1970’s after he brutally murdered dozens of young women, wasn’t something I was looking forward to. But having seen the terrific Netflix documentary “The Ted Bundy Tapes”, I decided to give the movie a chance. As it turns…
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Where’d You Go, Bernadette [2019] ★★½
It’s not director Richard Linklater’s finest hour, but “Where’d you go Bernadette” benefits from a great performance that makes the overall result worth checking out. Cate Blanchett is sensational as the title character, a manic wife and mother who also suffers from a severe case of social anxiety. I admit: it was hard to warm-up…
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47 Meters Down: Uncaged [2019] ★★
This mediocre follow-up to 2017’s “47 Meters Down” finds more group of friends trapped underwater with deadly Great White Sharks surrounding them. The first film wasn’t innovative in any way, but it was suspenseful enough and had some solid scares to validate its existence. The new one, while genuinely terrifying at times, plays its cards…
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Angel Has Fallen [2019] ★½
This horrible sequel to the equally horrible “London Has Fallen” is the worst blockbuster you’ll encounter this year. 2013’s “Olympus” was the most generic action mess you could think of. So why on earth did it spawn two sequels? And why on earth are audiences still paying to see the same movie over and over…
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Once Upon A Time In Hollywood [2019] ★★★½
Every Quentin Tarantino movie is an event and should be treated as such. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”, his 9th movie, is also his first non-Western film since 2009’s “Inglorious Basterds’. But he’s not too far-off (Heck, Even the title of the movie is a nod to Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in…
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Black Mirror: Bandersnatch [2018] ★½
I know I’m a bit late coming to this movie, but having heard a lot of things about it ever since its release on Netflix earlier year, I finally decided to give it a shot. If you’re not familiar with it, “Bandersnatch” is supposedly the “first” interactive movie in which you get to decide the…
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The Angry Birds Movie 2 [2019] ★★½
This sequel to the 2016 hit (which in turn was based on a video game app that made millions of dollars) is likable enough to justify its existence. I’m not a huge fan of the game and I certainly did not rush to see the first film when it came out, but having seen the…
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Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw [2019] ★★½
I know I know. How many more “Fast & Furious” movies are they going to keep making? But wait a minute. This spinoff might have the “Fast” gene, but it’s quite different than everything else we’ve seen so far. Ok maybe not entirely different, but Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham add something extra to it.…
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Booksmart [2019] ★★½
Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is a nod to coming-of-age films of the 80’s, 90’s and even 2000’s. Think of it as a cross between Superbad and pretty much any other teenage film you can think of. The good news is that it kept me amused for a while. The bad news is that I didn’t…
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The Lion King [2019] ★★★
Much like “Aladdin”, “The Lion King” was a big part of my childhood. Beyond the movie, I’ve played the games, collected figurines, and had pretty much every memorabilia you could think of in the 90’s. Nothing could ever replace that, but I’m always open to a new Disney film, even if it doesn’t add much…
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Crawl [2019] ★★½
Let’s be honest here: you don’t walk in to see a movie featuring deadly alligators expecting quotable dialogue or an unforgettable story. Personally, I want it to entertain me and “Crawl” does exactly that. It sure as hell isn’t swimming in the same waters as “Jaws”, but it gets the job done in just 80…
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Midsommar [2019] ★★★½
If there’s one movie that you need to experience this summer, “Midsommar” would be it. This stunning, almost dream-like movie from visionary filmmaker Ari Aster is the year’s most disturbing film. If you’ve seen Aster’s work in last year’s “Hereditary”, you know he’s a director who means business. In “Midsommar”, a film that prides itself…
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