Freaky (2020) - Movie Review

Over the last handful of years, once he stopped contributing to the perpetually diminishing returns of the Paranormal Activity series, writer/director Christopher Landon has been establishing himself as one of the better horror-comedy filmmakers working today. We can argue about the merits of Scouts’ Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse until the actual apocalypse rolls up, but his recent trend of ‘___ but it’s a slasher flick’ high-concept features has proven quite effective, between the Groundhog Day flip in Happy Death Day and the booster shots of Back To The Future Part II in its sequel. And that trend carries with his latest, a slasher makeover of the classic body-swap comedy Freaky Friday.

Jumanji: The Next Level (2019) - Movie Review

The formula that made Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle work is so brain-crappingly simple, it’s still bizarre to think that the numerous video game-centric films to come before it hadn’t cracked it. It took one of the most common and innocuous aspects of video gaming, the act of playing as a pre-designed character, and used to deliver some of the best body-swap comedy I’ve ever seen. I still can’t get over that it featured Jack Black acting like a Valley Girl, a combination that should’ve soured me from the guy’s work forevermore, and still managed to bring out the belly laughs. And with its sequel, it doubles down on that same formula and manages to do even better.

Little (2019) - Movie Review

This is gonna be somewhat of a redemptive piece for me, since technically, I should have seen this movie already. I was supposed to see this movie earlier in the week for FilmInk, but due to… well, let’s be honest, me screwing up, I didn’t get to the preview screening. This isn’t going to be in any official capacity, and I do try and watch every movie I can anyway, but out of a sense of professional pride (stop laughing), I had to get this film out of the way first.

That said, having now sat through this, I can’t help but be a little thankful that I missed out the first time around because, if I went to the preview screening, I likely would’ve sent my editor a page covered in my own arterial spray as my write-up. Yes, I type out all of my reviews, but trust me, I would’ve found a way to do that regardless because that is how painful this thing is to sit through.

Your Name (2016) - Movie Review

Makoto Shinkai is, in no uncertain terms, a genuine underdog story in the annals of anime history. Starting out by essentially going for broke in more ways than one, just to bring his first short film Voices Of A Distant Star into fruition, he has since gone on to become one of the most celebrated anime filmmakers of the modern era. That may not mean much to those outside of the fandom, but just to be clear, this guy’s work is so incredibly lauded that he has often drawn comparisons to Hayao friggin’ Miyazaki. Even if Makoto himself doesn’t take much credence to those comparisons, that’s pretty high praise and, even with the little of his work that I’ve seen thus far, I can’t help but feel that it is entirely warranted. Voices Of A Distant Star is easily one of the most emotionally potent works of fiction, let alone anime, ever conceived, and the fact that it’s only 25 minutes in length makes that feat even more astounding. And now, he has a new feature-length production out that is also gaining high praise. Time to dig in.