Jennifer Lawrence

Die My Love

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Die My Love
  • IMDb: link

Adapted from the novel of the same name, Die My Love is most notable for the standout performance of Jennifer Lawrence whose character Grace falls into postpartum depression following moving into the suburbs with her husband (Robert Pattinson) and delivering their first child. The film often blurs the lines of what’s real and what’s hallucinatory fantasy of Grace including visions of a mysterious man (LaKeith Stanfield) on a motorcycle, conversations with her dead father-in-law (Nick Nolte) who it seems is the only one she ever truly bonded with, a mysterious black stallion, and the film’s fiery conclusion.

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X-Men: Dark Phoenix – The Last Stand (Really This Time)

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: X-Men: Dark Phoenix
  • IMDb: link

X-Men: Dark Phoenix movie reviewAbandoning any further attempts to reconnect with the original timeline in Bryan Singer’s X-Men, Dark Phoenix offers Sony a second chance at the “Dark Phoenix Saga,” so thoroughly botched in X-Men: The Last Stand. Set in the early 1990s where the X-Men have gone from outcasts to national heroes, the film centers around Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner as X-Man Jean Grey struggling to deal with new powers after exposure to a cosmic entity that overwhelms her personality and breaks down walls in her mind meant to hide traumatic events.

Dark Phoenix clears the lowest bar fairly easily, it’s better than X-Men: The Last Stand. Then again, so is a lukewarm Diet Coke. While Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, and James McAvoy are all holdovers from X-Men: First Class, the film primarily focuses on Jean Grey who was only introduced in (the mostly forgettable) X-Men: Apocalypse forcing fans to think back to Famke Janssen‘s performance to have any real connection to the character. It doesn’t help that Jean’s main relationships in the film are with the bland Tye Sheridan as the boyfriend with which she shares no on-screen chemistry or Professor X (McAvoy) in full-on asshole mode for most of the film.

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Red Sparrow

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  • Title: Red Sparrow
  • IMDb: link

Red Sparrow movie review

Adapted from Jason Matthews‘ 2013 novel of the same name (which apparently “borrowed” heavily from Black Widow‘s comic history), and starring Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence, Red Sparrow is a disappointment in every since of the word. This movie is B-A-D. A slow burn spy thriller, with jolts of quick-cut stylized action, plot holes big enough to drive the Death Star through, and sex scenes so laughable only Showgirls fans can truly appreciate them, the film is a complete waste of time for everyone involved. For the audience, it’s an excruciating, although sometimes laughably bad, experience.

We open with a career-ending injury for Russian prima ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) leading her uncle (Matthias Schoenaerts) to ship her off to become a spy trained trained not in espionage, weapons, or spycraft, but only seduction. After a relatively short stay, Dominika is thrown into the field to seduce an American agent (Joel Edgerton) in hopes that he might give up the name of a mole within the Russian government. Of course our girl, with no real training, will out-fox both American and Russian spies to further her own agenda.

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X-Men: Apocalypse

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: X-Men: Apocalypse
  • IMDb: link

X-Men: ApocalypseX-Men: Apocalypse is a bloated film that wants more than anything to be epic in scale. Stuck with a ponderous first 45 minutes resetting up the world of the X-Men one decade after the events of X-Men: First Class (where apparently only some of our characters have actually aged) the movie has to spend far too much time catching us up on current events. With the script hamstrung by the need to properly introduce not only the movie’s villain Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), which means flashbacks to ancient Egypt, but also several new characters who will make up both Apocalypse’s Four Horseman (Olivia Munn, Ben Hardy, Alexandra Shipp) and the new version of the X-Men (Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lana Condor) it takes quite some time before director Bryan Singer‘s movie gets on track.

With the resurrection of Apocalypse, who begins recruiting new mutants for his army, the movie begins in earnest with Mystique‘s (Jennifer Lawrence) return to the mansion and Professor X‘s (James McAvoy) abduction. After an appearance by Stryker (Josh Helman), used only to shoehorn in a cameo of Singer’s favorite mutant, Mystique will gather a few mutants together to reform the X-Men.

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