MOVIE REVIEW: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

For the second film in 34 years, a new Indiana Jones film cheapens the perfect ending they already had. Make no mistake, the sunset ride of Indiana Jones the the Last Crusade was a “come back with your shield or on it” moment that cannot be topped. Yet, here we are, watching a studio milk an intellectual property they purchased after its peak for one more box office windfall. The producers are calling Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny a “one last time” type of excursion. It is indeed that. It is one last time to wish they left it alone or had a better story worth telling.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Flash

This movie was better off not slamming the accelerator through its narrative entanglements to the next action showdown. Miller and company are best in The Flash when they are not doing something super and addressing the bigger themes about their conditions and consequences. You feel the movie’s melodrama hit most not when it zips by you with a rush of hot air but in stillness when it wrestles with its proverbial speed demons.

MOVIE REVIEW: White Men Can't Jump

What replaces those external conflicts is internal angst from two men who aim to be more sensitive than competitive. Nothing’s really going to happen to anyone, outside of a touchy breakup or two, if they fail. That’s borderline character betrayal and counts as another miss. While a modern 21st century maturity against frank toxic masculinity was infused to be appreciated, there is an unmistakable edginess that is missing, top to bottom in White Men Can’t Jump.

2 STARS, 2023, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMay 18, 2023White Men Can't Jump, Jack Harlow, Sinqua Walls, HuluComment

MOVIE REVIEW: To Catch a Killer

To Catch a Killer unravels to become one of those manhunt movies where the pursuit is better than the prize at the end. Wild Tales director Damien Szifron provides several platforms for the central law enforcement characters to pontificate the importance of what they are doing to stop the present public menace. The actors squeeze every bit of seriousness they can, and you believe their motivations and intentions. Yet, when To Catch a Killer reaches its climax and it becomes the hidden villain’s turn to reveal their intentions, the suspense shamefully evaporates.

MOVIE REVIEW: One True Loves

One True Loves has one of those paperback novel premises that can only seem to work as a screwball farce or a serious melodrama when brought to the big screen. Wouldn’t you know it, the movie is based on a book from New York Times best-selling author Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones and the Six). The novelist was lucky enough to have the opportunity to adapt her own novel with her TV screenwriter husband Alex J. Reid.

MOVIE REVIEW: Showing Up

To say Showing Up is watching paint dry or, in the case, clay dry is far too mean. Quiet is one thing and introspective is another. Do you relish the glacial anticipation and personal payoff of creative culmination or are you just showing up to the art show at the end, as characters do here, for the wine and cheese.

2 STARS, 2023, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanApril 13, 2023Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt, Michelle Williams, Hong ChauComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Paint

There was a measure of true cleverness possible in inserting a throwback maverick character into the present day. Paint wanted to bend a vibe with fiction and flexed too far, to a place where its main character would not survive personally or professionally in the first place. The surrounding characters chipping away at the fraud underneath Carl Nargle– an arc amusingly not all that different from the esteemed Oscar-nominated TAR when you really think about it– exposed nothing we could not already see for ourselves.

2 STARS, 2023, Film Festival, Independent Film, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanApril 7, 2023Paint, Owen Wilson, Michaela Watkins, Brit McAdamsComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Space Oddity

All at once, this introductory mindset of dedication and gallows humor is both plucky and fatalistic. Exposing both curiosity and anxiety, Space Oddity inelegantly wrestles with those two prevailing traits. The realistic science fiction of its premise and the sunny gaze of the Rhode Island setting swirl up the whimsy. Lo and behold, we find out that quaintness has a limit when it comes to fulfilling the human condition.

2023, 2 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 31, 2023Space Oddity, Kyle Allen, Kevin Bacon, Alexandra Shipp, Kyra SedgwickComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Infinite Sea

In a scant 76 minutes, Infinite Sea bravely approaches contemplative science fiction with a tiny budget for VFX (also managed by Aramal himself) and an aim for abstract and cognitive obstacles of the human condition. Much can be complimented in those crisply stylish attempts at big ideas and even bigger questions. Yet, it is hard to fathom the so-called infinite as having something missing, but a penetrative punch is absent. The bridled chemistry of the leads is what you will put your finger on to blame.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

So far, so good, right? Staying local and rooted in family dynamics would make for an ideal Ant-Man movie and an escalator out of the grief management arcs of Phase 4, no? Wrong. Unfortunately, with a cinematic universe spiraling in a zillion rudderless directions of multiverse lunacy, the Marvel machine will not stand for that. Enlisting awards show and Rick and Morty writer Jeff Loveness (bask in that pedigree), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania reaches so poorly with attempted relevancy.

MOVIE REVIEW: Maybe I Do

Familiar premises need a little wrinkle or twist to not be another retread. Thanks to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Guess Who, the Meet the Parents franchise, and even the new You People, audiences have attended more than enough awkward meetings and dinners between contradictory parents trying to prevent a future marriage between their cherished children. Longtime Boy Meets World TV writer Michael Jacobs, making his feature directorial debut with a laudable cast, conjured an enticing sprinkle of spice towards this familiar setup with Maybe I Do.

2 STARS, 2023, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanJanuary 26, 2023Maybe I Do, Richard Gere, Diane Keaton, William H. Macy, Susan Sarandon, Luke Bracey, Emma RobertsComment

MOVIE REVIEW: You People

From Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poiter, forward to Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro, and even to the likes of Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mac, you’ve seen the interesting proposition of You People and its kind of entertaining clash before. Though it was made in 2021 and bears the label of 2023, You People is about a decade late to its own civics rally. The topicality has come and gone. Kenya Barris’s film arrives almost immediately wrapped in a time capsule, one that few will meaningfully open in years to come without more significance to recognize and remember.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

BRINGING YOU MOVIE REVIEWS AND MORE SINCE 2010

CRYPTOCASINOS

TheVore.com Streaming options

Brilliantly

Content & Links