Reviews
Catching Up: Three more docs for 2025
"I Like Me's" sincere portrait of the late John Candy will be an illuminating and nostalgic experience for anyone familiar with the classic 80s funnyman, but there are a few more quality options for those looking for good documentaries in 2025. Here are three more I...
Catching Up: ‘I Like Me’ doc captures Candy’s limitless charm
I Like Me (3 stars out of 4) Few actors in the 1980s felt more larger than life than John Candy, who parlayed early stardom in the Canadian sketch show SCTV into a host of leading and supporting comic roles in films throughout the decade. "I Like Me" shares Candy's...
Catching Up: Five (almost completely unrelated!) films from 2025
Sorry, Baby (R) Put simply, even though the subject is anything but simple, "Sorry, Baby" is the story of a young woman trying to reconcile her experience with sexual assault. Agnes (Eva Victor) is a professor at a small liberal arts college who was assaulted as a...
Catching Up: James Gunn’s ‘Superman’ is a very James Gunn-ish Superman
Superman - 3 stars out of 4 I still remember the first time my family rented movies. We were getting together with another family down the block, and for the event my parents picked up three VHS tapes along with a VCR to play them on. The titles? Disney's "Pete's...
Catching Up: Supernatural ‘Sinners’ explores the roots of the blues
Sinners - 3 stars out of 4 The mythology of the blues tells the story of a musician who meets the devil at a deserted crossroads to sell his soul in exchange for a supernatural ability to play the guitar. Most often the story is tied to Robert Johnson, a legendary...
‘Marty Supreme’ is a compelling but unsatisfying character sketch
"Marty Supreme" 3 stars out of 4 (You always want to at least try to evaluate a film on its own merits, but there's no escaping context. And it's especially hard to separate a movie from the other films you're watching around the same time. So with my excuses...
Catching Up: Five animated options for 2025
It might be odd for anyone who knew me growing up to hear that animation is one of the film genres I struggle with. Having spent most of my childhood drawing various Transformers and Star Wars characters before transitioning to recreations of Michael Jordan and more...
Catching Up: Three foreign films for 2025
Ever since my weekly review count slowed down a few years back, November and December have become catch-up time as I look for potential selections for my annual UFCA ballot. (In my defense, many of the contenders aren't made available until the end of the year,...
‘Predators’ documentary evaluates the ethics of documentaries
There is an argument to be made that the vast majority of documentaries contain some form of ethical issues, whether it be the filmmaker's bias, how the subjects are represented and compensated, or being accountable for how it impacts its subjects and viewers. This is...
‘Ella McCay’ is a disappointing mess of a movie
"Ella McCay" - 1 1/2 stars out of 4 Walking out of "Ella McCay," I knew I didn't like the movie, but it took a while to work out why. Part of the problem is an awkward start that seemed to have the opposite of its desired effect: a quirky older woman (Julie Kavner)...
Moody ‘Hamnet’ offers a possible view into Shakespeare’s backstory
"Hamnet" - 3 1/2 stars out of 4 When I type "Hamnet" into my computer, the little red line appears, because it thinks I should be writing "Hamlet" instead. But according to the title card of Chloe Zhao's "Hamnet," the names were considered interchangeable in...
O’Connor performance highlights Johnson’s third ‘Knives Out’ mystery
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (3 stars out of 4) Starting with 2019's "Knives Out," director Rian Johnson's series of murder mysteries have taken on a sequence of safe targets. The first movie pointed the finger at the wealthy entrenched aristocracy, where...