Author: Justin

It’s difficult to have been a film fan online the last few months and then try approaching a Captain Marvel review completely unbiased. Acknowledging that, this review is not the place to discuss that whole mess. Instead, let me state upfront that I really enjoyed this movie—flawed as it may be. Captain Marvel is the newest Marvel Comics characters to jump to the big screen while also serving as a bit of backstory before next month’s Avengers: Endgame. It tells the story of an intergalactic war between two races, the Skrulls and the Kree, and an earth woman (Brie Larson)…

Contrary to how I probably come off, I’m not actually a big comics nerd. I read them some as a kid, but my knowledge mostly comes from films and cartoons of the 90s. That’s where I am with Marvel’s Venom character. I know him mostly from the 90s Spider-Man cartoon and video games. That being said, the film version of Venom doesn’t feel particularly like the same character. Still, that only matters to comic fans. For everyone else, the question is if the movie is any good. To that, I can answer not really. Venom is about Eddie Brock (Tom…

There has oddly been a wrestling revival in Hollywood over the past few years. After a number of misfires (excluding The Wrestler), producers seem to have finally struck gold by turning the camera toward the fairer sex with series like GLOW and this film. Fighting with My Family isn’t a great film, but it’s far better than you might expect—even if you’re not much of a fan of the squared circle. Fighting with My Family is based on the true story of WWE wrestling sensation Paige. It tracks her early life as a kid growing up in England as part…

Director Frank Darabont’s 2007 film version of the Stephen King story The Mist is wonderfully out of place in modern horror. It really feels like nothing else that has come out of American cinema in the last fifteen years or so. Instead, it harkens back to classics like the Dawn of the Dead, which saw its own remake. Well, The Mist got a remake as a television series, and while the Dawn remake at least went in an interesting different direction, the same cannot be said for The Mist. Lasting only one season, The Mist tells the story of a…

There is something undeniably intriguing about the Flat Earth theory. What if one of the most foundational truths you’re taught as a kid is false? For some people, this goes right along with discovering Santa Claus is fake or losing faith in God—the difference being we have hard scientific evidence for the shape of the earth. So, when documentary Behind the Curve tries to take us into the (flat) world of Flat Earthers it may pique our interest, but how does it keep us from simply laughing? Mostly, it tries to humanize some of the bigger stars of the movement—namely…

It’s a difficult task to capture one medium inside another. Think about it—how do you capture the experience of a film on the written page? What about a video game through a non-interactive video? If you could fully do so, then what would be the point of the other medium at all? That’s the challenge that faces and is mostly met by a film like Searching. Completely told via computer screen, Searching is the story of David Kim (John Cho) searching for his missing daughter. When I say it’s completely told on a computer screen, I mean it. From the…

Making good films about religion is tough. Go too easy on the subject and you’re literally preaching to the choir with a film that tackles none of the complexities of faith. Go too rough on the subject and you risk alienating any potential audience either by offending their personal beliefs, or simply leaving them alone, lost in the wilderness. First Reformed leans toward the latter but will stumble for some in its final minutes. However, I found it gripping like few movies today. Ethan Hawke stars as a minister of a small church in upstate New York that mostly serves…

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt recently finished its four-season-run on Netflix, and I thought now would be a good time to look back not only at this newest season, but the show as a whole. If you’re coming in blind to the show, executive producers Robert Carlock and Tina Fey also worked together on Fey’s star vehicle 30 Rock. That should tell you a lot about whether you’ll like Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, as it doesn’t veer far from that show’s format. The titular Kimmy Schmidt is portrayed by Ellie Kemper, best known for The Office and Bridesmaids. She’s just as jubilant and…

Last year Netflix debuted the series Insatiable, and at the time I wrote about how much I absolutely hated the series. It wasn’t funny and worse it was rightfully wifely accused of fat-shaming. So, along comes Dumplin’, a comedy starring an overweight girl who doesn’t fit in and whose mother doesn’t seem pleased with her appearance. Imagine my surprise that it’s everything Insatiable wasn’t. Dumplin’s titular hero is Willowdean, a young girl who idolizes two people—her deceased aunt and Dolly Parton. Parton’s music actually plays a pretty big part in this film, but more on that later. Willowdean does not…

Just to clear the way of any confusion, this is a review of the Fyre Festival documentary on Netflix, and not Fyre Fraud on Hulu. This one sometimes includes its tagline “The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” but that doesn’t appear to officially be part of its title. The fact that two competing documentaries were made and released about the same event within days of one another speaks to the absurdity of the controversial music festival and also why it appeals to something deep inside each of us. The Fyre Festival was supposed to be the most luxurious music festival…