Movie Review: ELVIS Starring Austin Butler, Tom Hanks, Olivia DeJonge, Helen Thomson
Towards the end of Elvis, there’s a montage of clips of the real-life Elvis performing, including one of the final renditions of “Unchained Melody” that he performed. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, and for a brief moment, I couldn’t tell if I was hearing Elvis or Austin Butler. That’s how good Austin’s portrayal is. From the moment […]
Movie Review: TOP GUN: MAVERICK Starring Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly
Sequels are common. It’s, well, common sense. What do film studios like more than making good movies? Money. If a movie makes enough money, they want more money. Good sequels are uncommon. It can be hard to re-capture that magic that made the first movie good. Actors move on and are unavailable, the writers struggle […]
Movie Review: FANTASTIC BEASTS: THE SECRETS OF DUMBLEDORE
Boy, Grindelwald sure looks different, doesn’t he? The years seem to have changed him since Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. It probably wasn’t an easy decision to replace Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald for the third film, but undoubtedly the controversies surrounding his divorce made attempts to keep him on board untenable at best. […]
Movie Review: MORBIUS Starring Jared Leto, Adria Arjona, Matt Smith
Every year during Oscar season, fellow ReviewSTL critic Brad Heyen puts together a little competition for everyone to make their Oscar picks. Admittedly, I don’t see nearly as many movies as I’d like, so I’m often left making random predictions. This year, I just put Dune for every category. And I didn’t put the actors/actresses […]
How Does THE BATMAN Compare to Previous Versions of The Caped Crusader?
Comparisons are inevitable. Be it athletes (MJ vs. LeBron), franchises (Star Trek vs. Star Wars), music, TV, it’s almost in our nature to take two objects and see how they stack up against each other. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with comparison if you’re able to be objective enough. When Christopher Nolan released Batman […]
Review: UNCHARTED Starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, Sophia Ali
When it comes to films based on video game franchises, it’s pretty safe to say the results have been hit or miss. And miss. And more misses. And lots o’ misses. Whether it’s the Super Mario Bros. movie, the mixed bag of the Mortal Kombat franchise, DOOM, and basically anything Uwe Boll has touched, overall […]
Review: DEATH ON THE NILE Starring Kenneth Branagh, Tom Bateman, Annette Bening
Air-cool Pwah-roe. I think that’s how you say it. After seeing Murder on the Orient Express and spending half the film mentally trying to break down how to say Hercule Poirot (I took Spanish in high school, so trying to speak French is a bit of an exercise), I think I figured it out just […]
[Review] SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME Starring Tom Holland, Zendaya, Benedict Cumberbatch
(Note: As always, I will do my best to keep my review as spoiler-free as possible. Any part of the plot I mention will have been shown in the trailers. If you don’t watch trailers to avoid any possible spoilers, you have been warned.) Do you ever watch a movie where a character makes decisions […]
Movie Review: GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE Starring Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Paul Rudd
When I was a kid, my dad used to travel to Indiana for work a few times a year. Every trip, he’d take a few VHS tapes with him and record episodes of “The Real Ghostbusters” and bring them home for me to watch (I think they were on cable and we didn’t have cable […]
Movie Review: VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE Starring Tom Hardy, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Williams
Did anyone else know Andy Serkis is now directing films? What’s that? Everyone knew and I’m just out of the loop? Oh, okay… With 2018’s Venom being a box office, if not a critical, hit, I figured director Ruben Fleischer would have helmed the sequel. It was a bit of a surprise to see Andy’s […]