The Surfer Trades Waves for Breakdown
★ ★ ★ ½ The Surfer stars Nicolas Cage as a successful businessman, who brings his young teen son—referred to only as The Kid (Finn Little) in the credits–to an idyllic beach town in Australia, where he was born. He’s hoping to buy his childhood home so The Kid can finish growing up on the same beach he did. Cage’s character is never named. Like the film…
The Accountant 2 is Fun but Doesn’t Balance the Books
★ ★ ★ Something holds The Accountant 2 back from greatness. Don’t get me wrong — it’s a fun action romp with a great brothers-in-arms vibe. The fight scenes are well choreographed and entertaining. I think I know what it is — I’ll get into it after a quick story breakdown. Ben Affleck stars…
Until Dawn Loops Into a Fun, Forgettable Horror Ride
★ ★ ★ Until Dawn is a movie based on a popular PlayStation video game. It’s a horror film, filled with monsters, violence, blood and mayhem in a town called Glore Valley. This town vanished decades ago after a mine collapse. Several people have tried to find the town and were never heard from again.
Sinners Takes Its Time—Then Bites Down Hard
★ ★ ★ ★ Sinners is a thought-provoking horror film that takes its time to set up the story, establish the characters and drive an emotional connection to both. The script moves like a freight train—slow at first, then barreling off the rails into bloody chaos. The backdrop of this film, set in 1932 Clarksdale, Miss., is a certain kind of music said to be so powerful…
In The Amateur, Rami Malek Trades Code for Combat in a Solid Spy Thriller
★ ★ ★ ½ The Amateur is a spy thriller starring Rami Malek as Charlie Heller, an expert CIA cryptographer. He’s happily married to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), who is heading to London for a conference. She begs Charlie to take some time off and join her. “Next time,” he tells her. That’s the last time he sees Sarah alive…
Warfare is a Hard-Hitting, Brutally Real War Film
★ ★ ★ ★ Warfare is an intense film and does its damndest to immerse you in the impossible situation its soldiers find themselves in. The script is written from pieced-together memories of a real-life SEAL team. As such, it’s a hard-hitting, brutal true story. There is no cinematic score. Just hyper-realistic sound design that pulls you right in, grabs you by the throat…
Drop is an Absurdly Entertaining Thriller
★ ★ ★ There are a lot of things in Drop that defy logic and reason. Really, you’ll have to turn your brain off and just enjoy the ride. Fortunately, excellent acting, a well-paced script and solid directing help you do exactly that. Violet (Meghann Fahy) is on her first date in more than 10 years. It’s taken her quite a while to rejoin the dating scene…
A Minecraft Movie Mines Nostalgia, Misses the Mark
★ ½ A Minecraft Movie is based on the video game phenomena that has captured the imagination and creativity of gamers, young and old, since its official release in November 2011. In the game, you’re Steve, a character dressed in a light blue t-shirt and dark blue pants. Uniformed blocks of materials surround you and you break them to make tools and materials…
Hell of a Summer, Hella Boring
★ Hell of a Summer is a summer camp horror-comedy that fails to deliver scares or anything generally funny. I truly feel bad for the actors, who do a moderately good job of making do with what they’re given: a bland script with the most basic of plots, bad dialogue and zero character development. When someone is slashed on film…
The Woman in the Yard Finds a Seat but Not the Horror
★ ★ There’s probably a very good movie somewhere in The Woman in the Yard, but this film manages to not find it. Despite a few highlights, namely solid acting and great cinematography, this is pretty boring horror. The scariest parts of the movie are when the Woman (Okwui Okpokwasili), shrouded in all black…
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