Recent Reviews
These are our latest reviews of movies at theaters, at the art house, or at festivals.
Top Gun: Maverick
****2022, Joseph Kosinski
Butter the popcorn. Pour the soda. Settle in for the thrills.
Top Gun: Maverick marks a major milestone for post-COVID moviegoing. It’s the return of the classic summer movie experience.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
***2022, Sam Raimi
Multiverse of Madness doesn’t hit all the marks, but it’s a good piece of entertainment.
It’s Sam Raimi’s masterful third act that makes the Multiverse of Madness worth visiting.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
****2022, Tom Gormican
When it’s Cage-on-Cage sparring, it’s taken to a whole new level.
If more movies were this purely entertaining, life would be sooo fuhrrrrriiiccckkkking awesome!
The Northman offers moments of singular vision and intensity, but the story spends too much time in the land of the familiar.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore
**1/22022, David Yates
The energy simply isn’t there this time around.
The adventures of Newt Scamander take a strange, dark detour through a case of election fraud that’s lacking in magic.
With Ambulance, Michael Bay has discovered the thrill of filmmaking with drones and the audience suffers because of it.
The Lost City
***2022, Aaron Nee, and Adam Nee
Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are safely working in their comfort zones with this material.
A trove of comedy gold is found in The Lost City, but some of it’s fool’s gold.
The Batman
***1/22022, Matt Reeves
This Batman has a way of creeping into the psyche long after the movie ends.
The Batman slogs through a morass of franchise baggage and expectations; the effort is rewarded with a deft reset and a strong setup for future adventures.
Undefined characters and an underwhelming story send Uncharted into uninspired territory.
The Cursed (2022)
**1/22022, Sean Ellis
This atmospheric film’s ambitions aren’t enough to shake the specter of the overly familiar.
While technically well-crafted, the story in The Cursed doesn’t go far enough to escape the tried-and-true tropes and trappings of the werewolf legend.
Death on the Nile (2022)
***1/22022, Kenneth Branagh
This follow-up is a production that is visually playful, subtly humorous and thematically rich.
Kenneth Branagh’s inventive version of Death on the Nile finds him at his playful best as both star and director.
With its positive messages and peppy vibe, Sing 2 is a cure for the COVID blues.
As the MCU’s first formal feature foray into the multiverse, No Way Home is a strange — make that Strange — mash-up that is both entertaining and tedious.
This drunk history isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, but it is one wild ride.
West Side Story (2021)
****2020, Steven Spielberg
Thank the movie heavens, West Side Story was shot on film!
Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story is the kind of exhilarating theatrical experience the best of filmmaking is all about.