Nearly 39 years after audiences were introduced to Miami, Florida, detectives Marcus Burnett and Mike Lowrey (Martin Lawrence and Will Smith; respectively) in the 1995 action comedy Bad Boys (1995), a fourth entry in the series landed in theaters: Bad… Read More ›
Written and directed by Daniele Campea, Mother Nocturna (Madre Notturna) is a psychological drama about isolation, female rage, and a handful of Freudian family issues. Bathed in moonlight and steeped in folkloric imagery, the film takes viewers to a dark… Read More ›
One of my favorite questions to ask anyone is the following: “If you could store one memory in a bottle to revisit over again, what would it be?” My choice revolves around the first time I stepped into Walt Disney… Read More ›
Over my recent vacation to Mexico (my first one in over half a decade), I spent most of my days with my Kindle reading in the pool as I baked in the Gulf sun. The first work I devoured in… Read More ›
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – Writer/philosopher George Santayana There’s a presumption that everything that happens to you now, for the first time, is happening now for the first time. This is partially what… Read More ›
At first glance (or first trailer), Sean Wang’s directorial debut Dìdi (弟弟) (Chinese for “younger brother”) may seem like an empty rehash of other contemporary coming-of-age films like mid90s (2018) or Eighth Grade (2018), but to my surprise, there is… Read More ›
No matter what age you are, there’s never a bad time to pick up a new skill to help you engage with your emotions or guide someone else’s. By learning to regulate, each of us is more capable of dealing… Read More ›
Back in April, at the beginning of a particularly sleepy 12-hour shift manning the box office of the downtown Durham theatre in which I work, I opened A.M. Shine’s The Watchers on my Kindle, having impulsively downloaded it via the… Read More ›
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – Roman poet Juvenal in Satires. So often, the general public takes it for granted that someone will protect them. With stories featuring The Phantom and The Shadow as preludes to the birth of Superman and… Read More ›
“I hate Mondays.” As a child of the 1980s, I felt this phrase deep in my bones, which is likely why I owned several of the Jim Davis-created Garfield book collections so that I could revisit the three-to-four panel adventures… Read More ›
Truth is a matter of perspective. We know this, but we tend to forget it during the daily moments of our lives. What we see, what we hear, and how we react is all sifted through our experience, so, often,… Read More ›
In the cinematic world of mob films, the go-to filmmaker for U.S. audiences is likely Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas; Casino). With tales exciting and dramatic, he’s told stories that unengaged audiences will see as uplifting the morally grey areas of the… Read More ›
1968: director Franklin J. Schaffner releases his feature-length cinematic adaptation of author Pierre Boulle’s short story, Planet of the Apes. Since then, it’s spawned five canonical films, a television show, and a Tim Burton-directed remake — not to mention countless… Read More ›
The Other Laurens is a movie that’s all dressed up with everywhere to go. But after it gets one foot out the door, it can’t seem to go any further. With a nostalgic neo-noir/grunge visual style that’s sprinkled with touches… Read More ›
The world of Twisters swept up cineplexes barely one month ago. The latest disaster epic tells the story of Kate Carter (Daisy Edgar-Jones), now working as a meteorologist, when a friend from her storm-chasing past named Javi (Anthony Ramos) comes… Read More ›
The phrase “style over substance” is a common complaint regarding certain films. In these instances, some films can be so aesthetically pleasing that they lose sight of the story. Such films can craft well-drawn characters and a richly detailed sense… Read More ›
No one really knows when from where inspiration will strike. An innocuous action, a stray thought, a random observation — anything is ripe for seeding a new concept or approach. For writer/director/actor John Krasinski (A Quiet Place), inspiration for his… Read More ›
Filmmaker Dr. George Miller’s been entertaining audiences for nearly 40 years, either with tales of desperation (Mad Max (1979)), tales of greed (The Witches of Eastwick (1987)), or tales of hope (Happy Feet Two (2011)), to name a few. In… Read More ›
Within the home release of Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part One, the featurette “Crisis Prime(r)” lays out how just how long the plan for Crisis on Infinite Earths had been in the works, detailing that each film… Read More ›
When I was just a wee lad, 11 years old to be precise, I had two fears: frogs (still do to this day) and home invasion. For some reason, I figured that I was a special enough little boy to… Read More ›