I’ve been reflecting a lot lately about how lucky I was to grow up at the time that I did. Born in 1994, I was raised at a time when Disney was hitting its greatest streak and Pixar was changing the course of animated film forever (with a bit of healthy competition from DreamWorks). I…
***1/2 Though it starts as a typical (yet hilariously sharp) anti-corporate political comedy, Sorry to Bother You morphs into one of the most surprising and fascinating movies I’ve seen in years. Curated by ’90s “gangsta rapper” Boots Riley (of The Coup fame) in his directorial debut, Sorry to Bother You never loses sight of its…
**1/2 We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men are created equal, war never changes, and Ant-Man is the runt of the Marvel universe. Armed with a script more bogged down in sci-fi nonsense than The Phantom Menace and its midi-chlorians, Ant-Man and the Wasp is the worst Marvel movie I’ve seen. Is it…
***1/2 I’ve never been a fan of John Wayne and I know that Clint Eastwood has been reduced to little more than a raving lunatic in his old age, but I must admit that I’ve become quite a fan of Westerns. A lot of that can be attributed to some of my favorite video games like…
**** Delving deeper into the heart than any of their works prior or sense, Pixar created a magnum opus of over a decade in the making with Toy Story 3, a masterpiece so grand that not only can it likely never be topped, it’d be damn near impossible for it to even be attempted. In…
*** I can understand why people hated this movie. The plot’s premise is nonsensical at best, Nicolas Cage’s performance is hilarious almost to the point of being tongue-in-cheek, and the rather anti-climatic ending understandably didn’t leave the best taste in many viewers’ mouths. I’ll further admit that the reasons I thoroughly enjoy National Treasure probably have…
*** When I watched the original Toy Story, I was struck by how fresh it felt. The movie is short, yet refined and covers a lot of ground in its running time. While its sequel (which was released to great fanfare four years later) is still a good movie, it doesn’t retain the same sense…
***1/2 The movie that started the famous relationship between Disney and Pixar is often looked back upon so fondly that I couldn’t imagine it’s as great as everyone says it is. If you ever find a children’s movie on a list of the greatest movies of all time (which is often) it’s going to be…
**** A significantly smaller movie than its predecessors in terms of scope, Rogue One is nevertheless one of the top two greatest Star Wars movies of all time due to its ability to develop characters and create dueling emotions unlike any prior entry in the series. Many Star Wars fans were somewhat nervous about Disney’s…
Written by Ismael Isak **** For the past decade I’ve become much more serious about watching movies. I went through the entire IMDB top 250 list of movies and went browsing through countless forums searching for great films. I began to lose hope about finding another film that would make my jaw drop. Then I came…
