Movie Reviews

Crime 101

  • Title: Crime 101
  • IMDb: link

Writer/director Bart Layton‘s adaptation of Don Winslow‘s novella offers a mix between a heist film and a drama featuring the interconnected lives of strangers who converge. Our characters include our noble and uncatchable thief (Chris Hemsworth), the girl (Monica Barbaro) he begins dating after she literally crashes into him, a good cop (Mark Ruffalo) on the outs with his own department for following evidence rather than towing the company line, a middle-aged insurance agent (Halle Berry) passed over for another raise, and a second, more reckless, thief (Barry Keoghan) looking to steal a big score from Hemsworth’s character.

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Arco

  • Title: Arco
  • IMDb: link

A classic tale of a boy in a rush to grow up is explored through this futuristic time travel story when young Arco (Oscar Tresanini | Juliano Krue Valdi), out for a joy ride flying through the sky in a rainbow, loses control and ends up trapped nearly 900 years in the past. There he meets and befriends another lonely child (Margot Ringard Oldra | Romy Fay) who helps him search for his missing time-travel gem as Arco is pursued by three conspiracy nuts out to prove their wild theories are true.

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Shelter

  • Title: Shelter
  • IMDb: link

Shelter is far from the first film to play on the basic concept of letting sleeping dogs lie, but it does offer slightly more dramatic work for Jason Statham compared to some of his throwaway action sequences. We’re introduced to Mason (Statham) living in isolation on a small island in Scotland with this only ties to the outside world being a local fisherman and his niece Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) whose attempts to engage the mysterious stranger are rebuffed every time she brings him supplies.

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Mercy

  • Title: Mercy
  • IMDb: link

Set in a dystopian near-future (which seems to loosely blame the growing homeless for all crime in the city), the convoluted thriller from screenwriter Marco van Belle and director Timur Bekmambetov stars Chris Pratt as LAPD Detective Chris Raven. As the film opens, Raven has already been strapped to an electric chair and forced to prove his innocence to an Artificial Intelligence (played by Rebecca Ferguson) who has already judged him guilty.

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Is This Thing On?

  • Title: Is This Thing On?
  • IMDb: link

Loosely inspired by the life of British comedian John Bishop, Will Arnett stars as a newly-separated fortysomething who discovers a way to talk through his issues by doing stand-up comedy. At times the film is a little cute for its own good such as how Alex (Arnett) falls into comedy while high, the manner in which his secret is discovered, and the unavoidable kid performances and parties all movies like this seem contracted to contain.

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