PAW Patrol: The Movie isn’t explicitly copaganda, but it isn’t much else either: just toddler cinema designed to sell toys. In their conversation about 3 Ninjas Kick Back, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel had one of their funniest fights. They didn’t even disagree on…
Jerzy Skolimowski had a distinctive output well before he ended up in London. He began his film career in his native Poland with three successive features from 1964 to 1966 — Identification Marks: None, Walkover, and Barrier — which acted as semi-autobiographical accounts of…
Snake Eyes is all boring backstory and cliched tropes, and not remotely as weird as the material demands. Apparently, it’s absurdly hard to make a good movie out of a beloved ’80s cartoon that was essentially a glorified toy commercial for children. Although there…
If you love your action flicks stuffed full of nonsense exposition and explanation, Infinite is the film for you. You know you’re in trouble when a high-concept sci-fi or fantasy action flick opens with a voiceover that explains the premise and defines a bunch…
A Quiet Place Part II succeeds in much the same way as the original — as a sturdy, thoughtful, and understated exercise in genre. Box-office success on a tiny budget basically guaranteed that 2018’s compact, gripping little monster movie one-off A Quiet Place would get…
Georgetown isn’t the worst actor-turned-director debut feature, but it is a drab, superficial affair with little to distinguish it. Since coming to the attention of American audiences in his Oscar-winning turn as Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Christoph Waltz hasn’t wanted for…
Sponge on the Run could have been a nostalgic charmer, but is instead little more than a bit of cheap brand marketing. After 22 years, Spongebob Squarepants is only now receiving a spin-off in Kamp Koral, a series exploring Mr. Squarepants’ childhood adventures at summer…
A whopping 13 features deep into their cinematic partnership, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin were reaching a new apex of open acrimony in their relationship when they worked under the direction of Frank Tashlin on 1955’s Artists and Models, their penultimate film as a…
Dreamland is a beautiful, lite-Malickian effort than smartly boasts both gorgeous, mythopoeic expositions and thrilling storytelling. Set during the Great Depression and amidst the dusty storms of small-town Texas, Miles Joris-Peyrafitte’s sophomore effort Dreamland opens with intoxicating narration courtesy of the half-sister of the film’s…
Spontaneous tries to be too many things at once, and ultimately doesn’t scratch the surface of any of them. Spontaneous is a lot of things: sci-fi, horror, romance, tragedy, coming-of-age. The one thing it fails to be, however, is compelling; writer-director Brian Duffield is…
