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Heart Eyes Spoiler Free Review

Heart Eyes Genre: Horror/rom com Director: Josh Ruben Released: 2025      I can't tell you that you shouldn't go out and see Heart Eyes, but I also can't tell you that you should. Heart Eyes is a generic, inoffensive slasher movie firmly set in the lighthearted, horror-comedy mashup tradition of Scream. Whether or not you're up for that will be determined largely by your feelings towards that formula. If you hate it, obviously you should give this film a wide berth. If you love it, then I think this will probably be enough for you. If you're like me, and you've enjoyed the formula in the past but need more than just a standard execution drawing well within the lines of its contours, there's no reason to not just wait until it hits streaming.      Heart Eyes follows main characters Ally and Jay as they fight and flirt and generally do all the romantic comedy things, the hook being that all this happens within the context of a masked killer's violent rampa...
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The Brutalist Spoiler Free Review

  The Brutalist Genre: Historical epic Director: Brady Corbet Released: 2024      When it comes to movies, extreme length is something of a risk. On the one hand, length can amplify flaws that brevity may have been able to obscure; if your main character is irritating, the longer the film drags on the more time you give the audience to realize just how terrible David Aaronson-sorry, I mean your protagonist-truly is. On the other end of the spectrum lies your Lord of the Ringses, your Blade Runners, your Lawrences of Arabias, movies whose hefty runtimes exist to accommodate the scope and scale of something truly epic.      I say all of this because length is one of the main talking points about The Brutalist, and likely front of mind for those considering it for their next trip to the theater. Is it worth the three and a half hours, plus a fifteen minute intermission, the movie demands from you? The answer to that isn't clear cut, as what's good and not...
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Gladiator 2 Spoiler Free Review

  Gladiator 2 Genre: Historical Action Director: Ridley Scott Released: 2024      In the interest of full transparency, I feel it necessary to inform you that I don't love the original Gladiator. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a pretty good, entertaining popcorn flick, but I've never been able to see the satisfying, compelling characters or resounding, moving drama that others insist elevate the film beyond the status of competent but unremarkable action fare.            I say this in part because I just want to get my Gladiator hot take off my chest, but more importantly to hopefully dispel any doubts about my ability to approach its sequel objectively. I have no great attachment to or affection for the original Gladiator, so when I tell you that Gladiator 2 is kind of not great, I hope you will not attribute that stance to a surfeit of over-protective love for its older sibling.       I would say that Gladiator 2'...
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Megalopolis Spoiler Free Review

Megalopolis Genre: ??? Director: Francis Ford Coppola Released: 2024      Megalopolis, the self-financed vanity project by relevancy-starved director Francis Ford Coppola, follows an architect named Caesar Catalina as he attempts to build a utopia in the middle of New Rome, a city in America run by mayor Franklin Cicero. I could go into more detail about the plot, but to what end?      Megalopolis may be the closest I have ever come to describing a movie as "So bad it's good." Because make no mistake: this is a very, very  bad movie. Its useless, paper-thin characters stagger around the screen executing the awkward blocking of a high school play while spouting breathtakingly poor, middle school dialogue, its terrible special effects suck the life out of would-be jaw dropping displays of man's full architectural power unleashed, and its cast of (mostly) heavy-hitters is wasted on a banal, bloated, self-indulgent script with nothing intelligent or worthw...
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Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked

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Every Coen Brothers Movie Ranked from Worst to Best       As anyone who has listened to the podcast can tell you, I am a longtime fan of the directing duo Joel and Ethan Coen. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the Coens have released some of the finest motion pictures ever committed to the silver screen. Because I've been too busy with moving this week to watch a movie for the blog and recently closed out their filmography, then, I've decided to instead give you what you've all been waiting for(?) and rank their each and every film from worst to best for your reading pleasure!  #18) Barton Fink      We begin with the only Coen brothers movie about which I truly have nothing positive to say. While their dramas tend to be relatively straightforward in their execution, Coen brothers movies that lean more comedic tend to navigate an exceedingly delicate balance among sometimes contradictory forces of drama, pathos, and surrealism or what you might ca...
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Longlegs (Spoiler Free Review [aside from some basic plot details])

  Longlegs  Genre: Horror Director: Oz Perkins Released: 2024      If you missed the excitement, Longlegs is one of the year's buzziest surprise hits: an oppressive, nerve-shredding psychological horror movie and heir apparent to the legacy of The Silence of the Lambs that serves as another stop in the Nicholas Cage career revivification tour to boot. It was entranced with such marketing hooks that I found myself awaiting Longlegs in a sparsely populated theater a few weeks ago, and it was those promises that may have ultimately been the obstacle barring my access to the Longlegs hype train.       Let's be very clear up front: this movie is similar to Silence of the Lambs in its initial conceit and that alone. The movie is about a young, troubled, female FBI agent tracking down a serial killer of shockingly violent proclivities, but that, and I cannot stress this enough, is where the similarities end.       Silence of the Lambs...
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Deadpool & Wolverine (Spoiler Free Review)

  Deadpool & Wolverine (Spoiler free) Genre: Superhero/action comedy Director: Shawn Levy Released: 2024      Much of the pre-release discourse surrounding Deadpool & Wolverine has centered on whether or not it can "save" the foundering MCU. Having now seen it, my short answer is: no, but my longer answer is: why was it ever thought that this film would represent some kind of major course correction for Marvel?       Certainly nothing in the marketing that I saw indicated that this was meant to introduce some kind of radical alteration to the current direction the MCU is going in, and the film itself more than bore that out. Deadpool & Wolverine, despite having been folded into the MCU by dint of Disney's 20th Century Fox acquisition, is very much what I would call a stand alone movie. It's far more concerned with its titular characters than it is with slotting itself into the overarching narrative of the universe it is nominally a par...
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