‘Caught Stealing’ review: a wild, raucous, enjoyable ride
What I appreciate about movies like Caught Stealing is their ability to take the audience along on a wild ride. It doesn’t require much from its audience, unlike most movies. Just sit there and watch as the characters try to wiggle their way out of the problems they make. Darren Aronofsky’s latest film is a […]
‘Sunshine’ movie review: Maris Racal gleams like sunshine
Maris Racal is brilliant as Sunshine in Antoinette Jadaone’s powerful and moving tale of an ambitious young woman out to fight for her dreams no matter what. In the much-anticipated Sunshine, Racal masterfully plays 19-year-old Sunshine, a talented gymnast who discovers she’s pregnant a few months before the Olympic qualifiers. Her world crashes down the […]
Movie review: ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’ goes full circle
Everything came full circle in Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Believed to be the final movie in the hugely successful action franchise, The Final Reckoning takes off from the events in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One where Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his crew are out to save the world […]
Death is back–with even more vengeance in ‘Final Destination: Bloodlines’
Death is back and it’s got quite a lot of baggage. It’s been fourteen years since the last Final Destination movie and one of the most likely questions people would have about the new installment could be: “how is this any different?” Let’s face it. The Final Destination franchise runs on a tried-and-tested formula that […]
Liza Soberano delivers a scene-stealing performance in “Lisa Frankenstein”
Horror and comedy are, perhaps, the best ways to effectively depict stories about teen angst and the “monsters” that plague their daily existence. Case in point is the cult classic “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” created by Joss Whedon. The now-defunct TV show perfectly metaphorized high school monsters and how it’s like to deal with teen […]
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is a beautiful direction of an awful story
Director Martin Scorcese has previously decried superhero movies, claiming they are not cinema. Regardless of what you feel about it and whether he’s right or wrong, one thing remains true: he has earned the right to assert his thoughts about movies he feels are good or bad. That’s because he knows how to make a […]
“Target” is so effectively scary
For a quick few seconds, the opening scene of director Park Hee-kon’s suspense-thriller Target can give you a different impression of the movie. When the sequence opens to a series of interconnected shots of people going about their business in the city, with graphic notifications of mobile messages and transactions that pop out of the […]
‘Meg 2: The Trench’ review: Sinks its teeth perfectly
When Jason Statham first went head-to-head with the Megalodon in 2018, it felt to me like it was okay if it’s the last time we see Jonas Taylor because there was really nowhere else this can go. It wasn’t a bad movie. But it wasn’t that great either. Its sequel, however, is a different matter. […]
Khris Davis delivers a knock-out punch performance in ‘Big George Foreman’
George Tillman Jr.’s sports biographical drama Big George Foreman is probably my most surprising movie of the year (so far) because it was really good. I had little idea about the movie. But the name sounded familiar. It wasn’t until several minutes into the movie, when a young Khris Davis, who plays George Foreman, becomes […]
‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ has less stripping but a lot of really good dancing
Even if you haven’t seen the first two Magic Mike movies, Magic Mike’s Last Dance will not confound. So there really isn’t any reason to go binge its predecessors if you’re planning to watch the final installment in the Magic Mike series which opens in cinemas on February 8. Channing Tatum reprises his role as […]