Kleber Mendonça Filho is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today—and Bacurau is only his third feature. Despite his minimal output thus far, I do believe I’m right in saying so. His debut, Neighboring Sounds, is […]
Tag: Action
The Lion King (Favreau, 2019)
I have criticized Disney remakes in the past for their pointlessness; I have also given some a pass for their ability to entertain. The Lion King is not only a black hole of entertainment, it even goes […]
Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood (Tarantino, 2019)
Please note that this review includes spoilers about the film’s conclusion. Fairy tales are the spaces in which our childhoods dream. Their worlds are enormous in their specificity, for the greater the specificity, the greater […]
Murder Mystery (Newacheck, 2019)
I’ve gobbled up my fair share of mystery novels when I was growing up. I still do, on occasion. I even took a class on detective novels in university because I thought it’d be fun. […]
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Persichetti, Ramsey & Rothman, 2018)
It’s hard for some films to live up to hype. They’re talked up so much and made to seem like the greatest thing, and then when you get around to watching them, they can’t live […]
Incredibles 2 (Bird, 2018)
I’m very fond of the first Incredibles film, and by and large, its sequel is a welcome return. The characters are much the same as we’ve left them, as are their voice actors. Their personalities continue to […]
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (McQuarrie, 2018)
Fallout brings little that is new to the Mission: Impossible franchise. It also brings everything that is new. It’s not a contradiction as you would assume. To the first point, it follows similar currents that the other films […]
Upgrade (Whannell, 2018)
It’s not exactly sophisticated aesthetically or thematically, being another skeptical morality play on the dangers of biotechnological advancements that seek to erase our humanity, but Upgrade is quite a likable bit of pulp. There’s a Frankenstein quality […]
Brawl in Cell Block 99 (Zahler, 2017)
Within the first ten minutes or so of Brawl in Cell Block 99, Bradley Thomas (Vince Vaughn) angrily dismantles his wife’s car after learning of her infidelity. Nearly two hours later, the guy drags a baddie […]
Atomic Blonde (Leitch, 2017)
Um, so, I’m going to be one of the few people to admit that I enjoyed Atomic Blonde more than John Wick: Chapter 2… even though I’ll concede that the latter had a better plot (or, at the […]
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015)
I do think that The Force Awakens leans a little too heavily on the mythos of the first trilogy, almost repackaging the journeyman hero elements of A New Hope and sending it out to us as though it were […]
Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017)
Big, bold and beautiful. It’s hard to describe Rian Johnson’s achievements here any other way. This is the kind of Star Wars film that lives up to the grandeur of the title: high stakes galore, with whopping […]
Mandy (Cosmatos, 2018)
Let’s start off with the good. Panos Cosmatos knows exactly the kind of aesthetic he wants to project, which is a psychedelic, deep-toned phantasmagoria. It’s perfect for stoners and those who like their films vividly […]
Logan (Mangold, 2017)
If I had a special connection to the X-Men franchise, and if Wolverine had been one of my all-time favourite characters, I would’ve appreciated this far more. This whole setup feels like the culmination of a grand […]
Ocean’s Eight (Ross, 2018)
This insanely talented cast deserved much better than this kind of straight-down-the-middle filmmaking that gives them only the bare minimum to shine. The pedestrian nature of this endeavour was a big shame. I, quite shamefully, […]
The Lonely Film Critic 