Author: Derrick Murray

“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is the hottest people you’ve ever seen being the most charming they’ve ever been gleefully killing Nazis for 2 hours.

“Civil War” is a voiceless void of visceral visuals, a film constantly at odds with how well it is made juxtaposed by how disengaged it is from its own narrative

“Monkey Man” may not all come together in totality, but where it works it shines and where it falters it still shows incredible promise for what can come next.

Another week, another weekly movie round up. After such a lull in film releases, March and April seem to be starting the summer early, packing the theaters with a ton of releases, big and small. There’s probably even more films I could add here, but there just isn’t enough time in the week to get to them all even in review roundups. And I’m sorry, but after sitting through the first one, I have no interest in suffering through “Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey 2” no matter much of an improvement people said the sequel is. I’ve got trust…

I unapologetically enjoy a lot of Nickelback songs. They’re a band that exists in a very strange limbo of cultural relevance: they are a global sensation that everyone collectively despises. Their success (which is massive and more than you would ever think) is constantly juxtaposed by the vitriol the band gets for existing, and “Hate to Love: Nickelback” should be a great examination of that dichotomy. Instead, the documentary sticks to convention and strays away from the most interesting parts of their long standing career. It only briefly touches on their place in musical history, and fails to dig deeper…

There’s no getting around it: “The Beast” is a beast of a film. A cinematic journey that demands as much from the viewer as it does the vast vision of the director. Teaming with complex ideas, contrasting themes, and a plethora of genre mashups, “The Beast” is an amalgamation of inspiration pulled from some of the most auteur filmmakers to ever make films. And yet, for all its complexities its core is a rather simple story of love, longing, and Léa Seydoux (“Dune Part Two,” “Death Stranding”), who turns in a tour de force performance that carries the film from…

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” sports some of the most horrendous CGI I’ve seen in a while, so poorly conceived and rendered it sets VFX back 50 years.

After feeling like giving up on movies with the lackluster start of the year, March explodes with an overload of films in a short period of time. I’d love to say I have the wherewithal or even the time to give every film their critical due diligence, but unfortunately things have just not played out that way. Nevertheless, I do want to give some thoughts on a few films I’ve seen recently, many of which are either currently in theaters or coming to theaters within the next week or so. Hopefully this will clear the review slate for the next…

If I’m being honest, the recent rise of experimental horror has been largely a miss for me. Things like “Skinamarink” and “Mad God” are films I appreciate for their wild swings but don’t really care for their final product. Horror has been genre long unchanged and open to a freeform approach within the confines of its framework, and we often gravitate and praise films that execute the horror cliches well rather than champion ones that purposefully break free from them, existing on the fringes of a sprawling world. “Late Night With The Devil” somehow manages to exist on both planes;…

With any franchise that manages to overstay it’s welcome, those films are bound to have diminishing returns. There is only so much you can mine from preexisting lore and milk from the nostalgia well before it can no longer hide its cash grab overtones. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” felt the most balanced of the two; a beautiful send off to the older generation and a welcomed ushering of the new. This can be attributed to the generational passing of directors, with a son taking up a father’s mantle which simply by default maintains a certain reverence for its source. “Frozen Empire” lacks…