Here are some reviews of films coming out at the theater this week as well as others that may be in theaters or newly on home video.
Opening: DATE
Wide (United States)
Dumbo
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Limited (United States)
Diane
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A deeply spiritual movie that provides a slice of a caregiver’s life.
Unplanned
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: A reasonably engaging (if likely controversial) story about a woman who has a crisis of conscience at her job, anchored by a strong leading performance.
Expanding (United States)
Hotel Mumbai
Andrea Chase @ KillerMovieReviews.com
- Excerpt: The tension of silence and waiting is unbearable, as each character’s flaws and heroism comes to the fore.
Hotel Mumbai
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: While any movie about such a horrific event is subject to criticism of exploitation, Maras has given us…one which allows us to understand what it must have been like to endure this horror as well as one which honors truly heroic actions.
Hotel Mumbai
- Excerpt: One should be kind to the help and blessings come in disguise.
2019 Films In Theaters Now In Select Areas
2019 Oscar Nominated Shorts
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Captain Marvel
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Escape Room
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
The Prodigy
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Us
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Wonder Park
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Ayka
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: They say it’s the hope that kills you and Dvortsevoy lets enough light in to emphasise her plight.
Book of Monsters
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
The Brink
Laura Clifford @ Reelling Reviews
- Excerpt: a footnote past its expiration date.
The Brink
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: I feared a portrait of human dumpster fire Steve Bannon would humanize him, but he’s beyond that. Can we use this inside look at his political and cultural manipulations to stop his fomenting of hate?
Captive State
- Excerpt: Captive State feels labored in murkiness and confusion…another derivative disaster movie basically flexing a basic bicep of puff-piece paranoia.
Climax
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Noé seems intent to render narrative as meaningless as possible. Who and where succumbs to the experiential act itself.
The Crossing
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: This uninvolving coming-of-age crime drama tries to dazzle with visual tricksiness, but it cannot make up for its teen protagonist who is mere metaphorical symbol, and a bystander in her own story.
Dilan 1991
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
The Dirt
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: It’s gross-out impulses are entertaining enough, but it still falls back on the same formula that we’ve seen in so many biopics.
The Dirt
James Jay Edwards @ FilmFracture
The Dirt
Mike McGranaghan @ The Aisle Seat
- Excerpt: No movie could ever fully capture the insanity that was Motley Crue, but The Dirt comes about as close as possible.
Dragged Across Concrete
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: Zahler’s idiosyncracies as a filmmaker is fascinating to watch, and despite some sloppiness, the film has a menacing style that is wholly its own.
Extreme Job
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Gloria Bell
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Pracitce
- Excerpt: A portrait of loneliness addressed by letting go and dancing.
Gloria Bell
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: While the movie might not be necessary, Moore’s performance surely is.
The Highwaymen
Amber Wilkinson @ Eye For Film
- Excerpt: The title suggests derring-do, when No Country For Grumpy Old Men would better set the mood.
The Last Serb in Croatia
Dragan Antulov @ Draxblog Film Reviews
The Mustang
Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: Uplifting story about how a wild mustang becomes a spiritual teacher to an emotionally shut-down man.
The Mustang
Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: The eventual breakthrough between man and beast is incredibly moving, the mustang comforting Roman just when he thinks the horse has beaten him.
The Mustang
Out of Blue
MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: A limp noodle of a cinematic noir that drains Patricia Clarkson of her usual eccentric charisma. And where it aims for intriguingly oblique pseudoscientific philosophizing, it ends up merely obtuse.
Out of Blue
Betty Jo Tucker @ ReelTalk Movie Reviews
- Excerpt: This haunting detective story fascinated me because of its dreamlike, neo-noir feeling and the added layer of cosmology as a backdrop to the crime.
Relaxer
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: We get eighty-minutes of empty promises before ten-minutes of off-the-wall live wire insanity fulfill what we were conditioned to accept wouldn’t come. Too little, too late.
Ruben Brandt, Collector
- Excerpt: Writer/director Milorad Krstic has combined his love for painting and film into an action thriller as surreal as it is familiar.
Shazam!
Herman Dhaliwal @ Cinema Sanctum
- Excerpt: An earnestly joyful experience that keeps things simple and focused on character. The cast is charming and the humor is sharp.
Shazam!
- Excerpt: Comparisons to Big are unavoidable, and SHAZAM! even acknowledges this with a sly wink and its own walk-on keyboard scene. Levi makes this work with a performance that’s knowingly guileless – no mean feat.
Shazam!
Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Ultimately Shazam! emphasizes the happiness in comic books. It’s the heart that shines through.
Shazam!
- Excerpt: Take your kids, take your friends and have fantastic fun laughing at this foible-filled superhero origins story.
Superpower Dogs
- Excerpt: Superpower Dogs should give your dog-crazy kid ideas of careers to explore outside of the veterinarian route. For dog lovers everywhere, movie is just fun and full of sloppy, exciting reasons to love dogs even more.
Transit
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: There’s a melancholic beauty to [this] reality and Petzold does a wonderful job putting its bittersweet poetry on-screen.
Triple Threat
- Excerpt: …synthetic showdown of low-rent lacerations and belabored beatings. Triple Threat is more of a single slingshot of cut-and-paste frivolity that seems more makeshift than raucously inspired
The Wedding Guest
- Excerpt: Turn down this invite.
2018 Films
Green Book
For member reviews of this film, follow this link
Cradle of Champions
Jared Mobarak @ JaredMobarak.com
- Excerpt: Luckily the broader topics of boxing as a sanctuary of mind, body, and spirit shine above [the often warring] individual narratives.
The Photographer of Mauthausen
- Excerpt: This is a sensitive mournful movie with a carefully controlled revelation of brutality; the movie reminds us of the how easily humanity is lost and how heroes can be made in different ways.
Tumbbad
C.H. Newell @ Father Son Holy Gore
- Excerpt: Tumbbad is a spectacle of epic horror, like a great, terrifying, and sociopolitical piece of classic literature brought to life. The personal and the national become one in a Gothic fable about the corrosive nature of greed which explores how a people can be damaged by colonialism and imperialism, as well as how a spiritual culture can become warped by capitalist forces.
2017 Films
Midnight Runners
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
Rodents of Unusual Size
Dan Lybarger @ eFilmCritic.com
- Excerpt: The team behind Tilapia Films (Quinn Costello, Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer) have managed to make environmental horror stories that are also humanistic and occasionally hilarious. Their movies don’t berate the viewers what human folly has done to the planet. Instead, they wisely focus on what has to be done with the current catastrophe.
A Taxi Driver
Bavner Donaldo @ Cinejour [Indonesian]
