Movie Reviews

M3GAN 2.0

  • Title: M3GAN 2.0
  • IMDb: link

Far more action-comedy than horror-thriller, M3GAN 2.0 is an incredibly silly film. I don’t know if there’s a suspenseful moment in the entire movie as writer/director Gerard Johnstone leans hard into comedy, but there is some wacky fun to be had in a script that seems to have a very mixed message about the rise of Artificial Intelligence. Allison Williams and Violet McGraw reprise their roles of Gemma and Cady from the first film who are forced to bring M3GAN (Jenna Davis) back when an even deadlier android based on the M3GAN designs, and built as an assassin for the military, goes haywire and begins following her own agenda including killing anyone tied to her creation. 

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The Secret World of Arrietty

  • Title: The Secret World of Arrietty
  • IMDb: link

Back in theaters as part of Studio Ghibli Fest, the 2010 Japanese animated film explores the world of tiny people known as Borrowers who live secret lives hidden away by borrowing small amounts from the human world and carefully hiding their existence. Our main character is Arrietty (Mirai Shida | Bridgit Mendler) who comes of age in the course of the film taking part in her first borrowing with her father (Tomokazu Miura | Will Arnett) and also, against her peoples’ custom and her mother’s (Shinobu Otake | Amy Poehler) warnings, beginning a friendship with a sickly human child name Sho (Ryunosuke Kamiki | David Henrie).

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Bride Hard

  • Title: Bride Hard
  • IMDb: link

Bride Hard is a dumb comedy stuck in the middle of a bad spy film. I’m not sure how it made it into theaters. Perhaps no streaming service would take it. Rebel Wilson stars as Sam, an unorthodox spy who manages to get in trouble both at work and with her friends when she attempts to merge a mission in Paris with her childhood best-friend’s bachelorette party. Put on leave, Sam attempts to mend fences with Besty (Anna Camp) showing up to her wedding despite being downgraded from maid of honor, in favor of Betsy’s annoying new sister-in-law (Anna Chlumsky), to last among the bridesmaids. However, when armed terrorists show up to rob the rich family Betsy is marrying into, Sam puts the skills she’s kept secret from her friend to use.

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Elio

  • Title: Elio
  • IMDb: link

For their latest, Pixar delivers a story about a young boy who has to be abducted by aliens to learn about friendship and family. Following the death of his parents, a lonely Elio (Yonas Kibreab) struggles to connect with his aunt (Zoe Saldaña) or make friends while becoming obsessed with the idea of alien life and traveling to the stars to escape a world where he doesn’t seem to belong. Eventually Elio gets his wish when his message to outer space is overheard and he finds himself among ambassadors of a federation of planets, so to speak, known as the Communiverse (a moniker that is as awkward spoken aloud as it looks in print).

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F1: The Movie

  • Title: F1: The Movie
  • IMDb: link

A good racing movie can be an awfully fun time at the movies. While not a great film, F1 sticks to the basic formula giving us a gritty old veteran with something to prove, a hotshot rookie who hasn’t broken through, and a racing team outgunned and outmatched that desperately needs a miracle win. F1 may put the formulaic in Formula One, but there’s a reason the formula works as director Joseph Kosinski fits these pieces (and some darn good looking racing sequences – particularly in IMAX) into just the kind of fun summer movie I was hoping for and would make a fun pairing with something like Ford v Ferrari for a racing double-feature which ultimately has something similar to say about racing and the crazy fools who do it for a living.

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