Obscured amid the chaos of the world shutting down, emerge the barely-perceptible buds and blossoms of a remarkable turnaround. In his short 14 month tenure, Minnesota Timberwolves President Gersson Rosas has made a Turkish bazaar look sedate. He has wheeled and dealed the downtrodden franchise into a promising and even enviable position for next year.
When Rosas arrived, the Wolves were mired in salary cap hell, a mere $3 million short of the luxury tax. A very informative analysis by Dane Moore displayed...
Any doubts about the best movie experience in 1960 ended in the parking lot of the Cooper Theatre in St. Louis Park. The first hint for movie goers that it would not be business as usual was the outdoor fireplace and glittering fountain. And then astonishment with the small engine aircraft parked on the front lawn. How in the heck did they get that in here? Did they land that baby on Wayzata Boulevard? There were more marvels inside. The Cooper’s state of the art circular 105-foot-screen was the largest ever built. Seats were plush mohair and service was provided...
Whether you like it or not, the box office will be playing host to Disney as they re-merchandise their back catalog into live-action movies until further notice. While the process began with earlier works produced a generation ago, now that the Mouse has decided to furiously tap into 90s nostalgia (the 30-year nostalgia cycle is relentless), this year we’re getting Aladdin and The Lion King repackaged and sold to us once again.
Putting snark aside for a moment, I don’t consider any piece of media so precious and holy that they should be preserved in amber. Remakes are as old as Hollywood itself, and if...
This has been a great month for movies about people magically changing age. First Shazam!, and now Little. I had been a little nervous, given how comedies tend to pack the trailers with the best scenes and leave little else to the imagination, but I was pleasantly surprised to find Little to be a fun movie, even if it follows a tried-and-true comedic formula.
Ever since a traumatic talent show moment changed nerdy young Jordan Sanders’ (Regina Hall) life, she vowed to use her intelligence to become to the boss so that she could...
There’s a scene in Shazam! that I think perfectly sums up how I feel about it. Cutting from an action packed scene, we’re shown a shot of a young boy smashing together Batman and Superman action figures together, making action noises and having fun. His attention is grabbed by something out the window, and we see Shazam fly by while fighting the main villain, and he notices the boy. Wide eyed and open mouthed, the boy drops the Batman and Superman figures to the ground.
When first announced, Shazam! sounded like an announcement by a studio building out a serious cinematic...
Growing up, I liked two things more than anything: trains and elephants. So, an animated movie where elephants spend a lot of time on a train appealed to younger me, and as a result, Dumbo was my favorite Disney film.
Years later, it’s still high on my list, but with asterisks. Yes, it was originally a short that Disney decided to expand into a feature, leading to the film’s exceptionally short runtime (at 68 minutes, it’s one of the shortest of all the Disney features).
Yes, despite Pink Elephants being the best animated representation of surrealism...
Because I’m cynical and older than the target audience, I went into Five Feet Apart expecting to have to carefully write this review. It’s one thing if the movie is actually atrocious and it's obvious to all (so not Twilight, but maybe some of its fantasy romance knock-offs), but if it’s a passable piece of media that just isn’t for me, it’s not my place to tear it down unnecessarily. And given that The Fault in Our Stars really didn’t sit well with me, I struggled with how I would approach my dislike of the dying-kid-romance genre without it being unnecessarily negative to the film.
Well,...
Marvel Studios right now is sort of enjoying the status Pixar did in the last decade - the studio name alone is an indication of a level of quality to expect. Unlike Pixar, however, Marvel Studios seems to be getting better with age. Captain Marvel is the 21st feature film in the franchise, and also functions as an origin story for the character. It also happens to be one of the best superhero origin stories in the Marvel canon, taking the formula found in earlier films like Iron Man and Doctor Strange, and tossing it aside for an identity crisis mystery.
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It’s the early months of the 2019 year, which means all the good movies that came out months ago are lining up for awards. Which means the movies coming out in theaters… generally speaking, aren’t really at risk of missing out. But even with this knowledge, nothing could really prepare me for Serenity.
Matthew McConaughey is Baker Dill, a deep sea fisherman who captains the Serenity, a small fishing boat. He lives on the vaguely Caribbean Plymouth Island, taking rich tourists out to sea so they can catch trophy fish, but getting in the way of his livelihood...
Peppermint is a frustrating film. Not because of a dense plot, or an unconventional, challenging ending, but because it inadvertently teases better movies as it speeds along down well driven roads.
To start with, we’re introduced to Riley North (Jennifer Garner) as she dispatches a man in a parked car. The opening titles start, with a montage of Los Angeles’ condo towers juxtaposed with the tents and shopping carts of Skid Row. I wasn’t expecting social commentary in this action movie, but hey, I’m game.
Riley’s barely stapled herself back together in the back...
