Author: Kevin

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” – Great expectations. Five years ago, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse surprised us in theaters, then surprised us again by winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. Like all great films, it did something new, namely an animation style that looked like it leapt from the pages of a comic book. It…

“The Little Mermaid (2023)” – The Voice. With the release of the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, Disney will almost assuredly see its last billion-dollar box office remake of a beloved classic. Like The Lion King, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast before it, The Little Mermaid will benefit from my generation reminiscing about…

Audiences seem genuinely confused by the current slate of MCU offerings and what to expect going forward. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever were both quite good. But Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania was only okay, Ms. Marvel was a waste of time, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law did not…

“Sisu” – Silence is golden. Aatami (Jorma Tommila), the main character in Sisu, has two lines of dialogue in the film’s entire ninety-minute runtime. Both of them occur at the film’s end and neither of them define the word sisu. According to another character, Aino (Mimosa Willamo), sisu is a Finnish concept that cannot be…

Comedy troupe Broken Lizard has been trying to recapture the magic of their one legitimate hit – Super Troopers – for twenty-two years and five movies. Hoping the sixth time is a charm, they bring us Quasi. As in Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. And they bring it to us via Hulu. That’s just…

“Renfield” – All bite and no bark. Six years ago, Universal Studios attempted to start a franchise called Dark Universe that was supposed to feature a bunch of classic horror characters. The first movie, The Mummy, did exactly what I predicted it would do. Namely, it crushed the franchise in its infancy. With the Dark…

Now that we are into the beginning of the blockbuster season, we have a lot to choose from. Super Mario, John Wick, Adonis Creed, Ghostface, and a Dungeons and Dragons party are all vying for our attention. Would you believe me if I told you your best option is none of those, but instead Air…

The last serious attempt at a Dungeons & Dragons movie was in 2000, resulting in a critical and commercial bomb (10% on Rotten Tomatoes, grossing just $33.8 million on a $45 million budget) and a legion of angry dungeon masters. Impossibly, two direct-to-DVD sequels were filmed and released in 2005 and 2012, presumably as a…

“John Wick: Chapter 4” – One thousand assassins dead, a zillion more to go. “Once you kill him, then what?” a friend asks John Wick (Keanu Reeves). Great question. In the never-ending kill-box that is the John Wick universe, that question is the only time the franchise seems to realize that it has yet to…