movie reviews

Back when it came out, I heard a fair bit of positive buzz around the new German adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, playing on Netflix. Then the Oscar nominations came out, and it garnered 9 of them, which isn’t normal for an international film. It went on to win 4: best cinematography, production design, music, and foreign feature. So it’s been on my “to watch” list for a while. After the excellent Churchill-focused WWII Darkest Hour (very good, and highly recommended, if you haven’t seen it), Denisa and I felt like going for another historic movie. Why

Would you believe it? I went to my first in-theater movie since . . . Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, I think? So more than an entire year. (As an aside, part of me is shocked that I’ve stopped going to theaters. But on the other hand, then I was in the theater, and a kid a few rows back kept talking (loudly) through the whole showing. Had to have been about 6, I’d guess. It was more than a little irritating. Also, the screen was definitely bigger than what I have at home, but I was sitting

Based solely on the recommendation of my agent, Tetris (now streaming on Apple TV+) skyrocketed to the top of my “Movies I Want to Watch” list. He said it was one of the best movies he’d seen in a good while, and he watches a lot of movies. (This is coming from me, who most people think watches more than my fair share.) On paper, the movie just shouldn’t be very good. I mean, it’s about the origins of Tetris, of all things. How thrilling can something like that be? The answer? Very. Succinctly put, it focuses on the mad

I’m a fan of the original Willow. Is it the best fantasy movie out there? No. But for its time, it did a great job of actually being a good fantasy movie, and those were hard to find. So when I heard Disney was making a sequel to the movie as a television series, I was pretty excited. More so when I heard Warwick Davis would be involved. The preview looked great. And then I started hearing very mixed reviews. Not enough to turn me away from watching it, but it took me a bit to get around to it.

Denisa and I went to see Matilda back when it was on Broadway, and we both really enjoyed it. The music is different than a typical musical: a bit more dissonant and free form than a classic Music Man or Phantom of the Opera. But I liked the creative rhymes and the way those rhymes fit into the verse, and I actually listened to the cast recording all the way through several times since. So when I saw Netflix was coming out with a movie adaptation of the musical, I was very excited. Not excited enough to watch it the