Film Reviews
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FRIDA (2024) for AWFJ
…From the start Frida is awash in micro-hilarities, observations spoken with quirked lips, the pigmented blues of loss, passion splashed in red, and sunlit happiness interrupted by grey. The film is methodical and restrained yet exquisitely rendered…
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Kung Fu Panda 4
Dragon Warrior Po faces a new threat–a sorceress Chameleon. Without his usual allies and with an unlikely sidekick, can he skadoosh his way to victory one last time?
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Drive-Away Dolls: A Road Trip Romp
Imagine if Thelma and Louise went wild on a road trip with sexual contraband and a penchant for late-1900s sex comedies (yes, I’m giggling too). That’s the essence of Drive-Away Dolls, a movie that takes…
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Hallmark’s Sense and Sensibility is Jane Austen with a Fairytale Flair and Romanclusivity
This film has the quality of illustrations lifted off the pages of a book of fairytales. The characters are flawless, the costuming is vivid whimsy flirting on the fantastical, and the storytelling carries the harder…
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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Film Event: Are You Ready for Hashira Training?
Alright, everyone, let’s talk about Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba first. This is the anime/manga that brought me back after a few years away. Its compelling narrative refuses to let you sit still, pushing and…
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DUNE: Part Two – Once Again Arrakis Decides the Fate of the Universe
The number of people who were crushed at the end of DUNE: Part One is astronomical. If you’ve never read the books, you had no idea that Denis Villeneuve couldn’t possibly complete more than a…
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Bob Marley: One Love is a Medley of Many Loves
The challenge with a biopic is to layer the truth with the legendary, to weave the introspective with the iconic. Bob Marley: One Love attains a delicate symphony, and while it occasionally loses focus due…
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SUNCOAST: Salty, Sweet, and Sobering
In this semi-autobiographical tale, helmed by Laura Chinn, a teenage girl is given the space to “get by” while dealing with the end-of-life decisions her family is facing. Doris (Nico Parker) juggles caring for her…
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Madame Web Does Nothing to Lure You In
At some point during my screening of Madame Web, I started looking for the fastest exit. I got a spider bite in Kerala, India, that turned into a mottled, purple-red blister and eventually sent me…
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Lisa Frankenstein: This Undead Heart Misses a Few Beats
Here’s what we’re about to do. We’re about to go back. How far back? 1818 but also the 1980s because Frankenstein is shambling back for a revival. We had a fair warning when the Oscar-nominated…
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SCRAMBLED (2023)
The debut Leah McKendrick cracks open the complexities of fertility with its woman-disrupted sense of humor
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Argylle Review: My Grandmother Would Call it Foolishness (and She’d Be Right)
“Complexity is good in a spy caper,” you’ll need to chant that for most of the 2 hours and 19 minutes runtime. In the realm of not-quite-right action comedies, there are falters and there are…
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Fitting In (for AWFJ)
This tale of teenaged awakening focuses on the upheaval that detonates when a girl realizes she’s not what society calls “normal”
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The Underdoggs
The Underdoggs, the new film by Charles Stone III starring Snoop Dogg, feels like a Black comedy from a previous era. A comedy greatly inspired by films like The Bad News Bears and The Mighty…
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The Book of Clarence
I had to sit with this film for a little while, The Book of Clarence. Much like Jaymes Samuel, I grew up watching those cinematic biblical epics from the mid-20th century. Watching The Ten Commandments…
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The Beekeeper
Twenty Twenty-Four has just started, and David Ayer & Jason Statham are out here giving action movie fans a pure banger. Let’s just get to the plot in pure hyperbole. Jason Statham, the transporter, is…
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Mean Girls (2024)
I’ve gotten to the point where I know I’m old when they are doing remakes of movies I saw as a tax-paying adult. Mean Girls came out in Two Thousand and Four y’all. The story…
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All of Us Strangers
Andrew Haigh’s adaptation of the 1987 novel Strangers, starring Andrew Scott, Jamie Bell, Claire Foy, and Paul Mescal, is a deeply personal tearjerker that will leave you emotionally wrecked in the best way possible.
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Saltburn
Watching Saltburn was an experience as I’m not entirely familiar with Emerald Fennell’s work overall as an actress or filmmaker. This film, one where a young man, Oliver Quick, played by Barry Keoghan, who has…
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