Maleficent: Mistress of Evil isn’t the only belated sequel hitting theaters this weekend. A whole 10 years after Zombieland began its journey to cult status, the same creative team returns for more zombie horror/comedy insanity with Zombieland: Double Tap. And while this new film doesn’t try at all to reinvent the wheel, it mostly retains the […]
‘Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil’ Forgets Its Titular Character
It’s the weekend of sequels, with the belated Zombieland: Double Tap spattering onto screens, along with Disney’s second entry in the Maleficent franchise (a phrase I didn’t think I would be saying today), Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. I guess I should have seen this coming, with the monstrous $758 million that the first film accumulated […]
‘The Addams Family’ Serves Up Passable Family Entertainment
The Addams Family has cemented itself over the years as an iconic part of pop culture. The theme song is immediately recognizable even to those who haven’t watched the show from the ’60s (me). My main source of knowledge of the creepy, kooky, all together ooky family comes from Barry Sonnenfeld‘s 1991 film, which I […]
‘Joker’ Is A Mixed Bag With A Singular Performance
There has been an absurd amount of discourse around Joker, long before its wide release in theaters this weekend. The film, which won the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, has garnered as much attention for Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as it has for the supposedly controversial way in which it depicts a violent, […]
‘Raising Buchanan’ Is Amusingly Oddball, If Unbalanced
It’s always encouraging to see locally produced independent films find their way from festivals into movie theaters, especially when they’re as delightfully oddball as Raising Buchanan. Shot entirely in Arizona, the film is part wacky crime caper, part political satire, and part character study. And while the film can’t quite balance its various tones and […]