The Tomorrow War has a fantastic premise, talented actors, and stellar effects, yet it never comes together properly. The enthusiasm for its own appeal wanes, and it becomes a shell of a movie, running on formula and tropes.
If you read many of my reviews, you might’ve noticed I have a bias. I’ve spoken about it before: I like unique, wild, and weird. Stories going out of their way to be meta, mind-bending, or commentate on current events or societal ills have often gotten positive reviews from me.
Trailers are their own unique pieces of art. Sometimes better than the movies/shows they go with. The time restraint forces creativity and efficiency. These five are some of the best I’ve seen lately.
The Matrix Resurrections is disappointing. This one sentence sums up the bulk of my opinions. I had such high hopes, especially with how good the first movie was, but I wasn’t feeling it by the end.
It’s time to go back four years and look at an old article Brandon Scott wrote about May The Fourth.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is the type of movie that could only exist in this new media environment. The draw is the spectacle of connecting reboots and pulling in actors to reprise long-gone roles.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife has several excellent moments, a great protagonist, and a heartfelt core, yet is underwhelming in a lot of ways. Those who watch it will remember it mainly for its fan service, and though that’s kind of the point—it’s not great we have a lot of movies made with that in mind.
My reviewing of Turning Red has to, by the sheer presence of its theming, contain caveats. It’s a movie that has a heavy focus on periods and mother-daughter conflicts during adolescence. As an adult male reviewer, it’s not my place to speculate on how true to life this movie is. I’ve simply not grown up as a teenage girl.
I will not say The Adam Project is a unique movie. Barring a few moments of extreme narrative creativity, it’s got all the tropes you’d expect and runs through them with a blistering pace.
Encanto is peak cinema. That’s a hot take, but it’s hard to argue against a movie made with this level of care, skill, and storytelling effort.
The House is an interpretive art piece. The creators had a point to make, and a message to send—but I’ve yet to figure out what that message was.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of The Ten Rings is an incredible movie held down by only one thing: its hero’s journey parts. Unlike a lot of films dealing in mythical storytelling, its structure is a detriment.
