Reaction Shots

I generally steer away from reviews of films I’m going to see unless I really don’t care about them or have much of a stake in them. Most of the MCU releases have been like that and it’s 50/50 split on whether I’ll like them or not. Loved - really did - Marvels . Didn’t care for, at all, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania . Actually., rather liked Eternals , really didn’t like Thor : Love and Thunder. And while it was bloated, there was much that was admirable and near-great in Coogler’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever . I feel like I”m forgetting some, but I can’t be bothered to comb my memory. Captain America: Brave New World was middling. I didn’t dislike it as much as many, but if it was titled The Incredible Hulk 2 , I wouldn’t have blinked. Thunderbolts* ? Really enjoyed it. I’m a mark for Florence Pugh and Yelena Belova is one of the more interesting characters to come out of Marvel post-Endgame. Thunderbolts* is her move, despite a strong ensemble, but Yelena’s the glue in the...

  …but not exactly “good”.  My expectations grew lower and lower each time I saw a preview. This could have been a course correction of sorts for Marvel, but as it was, we are left with a hodge-podge of undeveloped ideas and a plot that only serves to tie up threads dangling from a forgotten entry in the series first phase.  I wasted till. Now to see this because I really am that apathetic about the whole enterprise, but I really like Anthony Mackie as an actor and his take on Sam Wilson. Harrison Ford is going to get my ass in the seat, and - at least, originally - I was on board since it seemed the filmmakers were going for a Captain America: The Winter Soldier direction.  Of course, Mackie and Ford elevated the material, but the script is such a collage of moments and attempts to gin up a sense of high stakes but executed so haphazardly, if not disinterestedly, that I found myself shrugging my shoulders internally.  To recap the plot this lackluster bores me...

  “We have no other land, that’s why we suffer for it.”  - A Palestinian Woman in   No Other Land First, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deserves respect for choosing   No Other Land   for Best Documentary Feature. Second, the River Oaks Theater in Houston deserves a vote of thanks for bringing it to the public when it cannot seem to find a distributor in this country.  I need some more time to myself to sit with this and process this document. I really don’t feel like this is one of those films that gains in being analyzed as a film; it’s power is in its immediacy and what it shows us.  Let me be clear about something else; being against Israel’s policies of occupation, erasure, and let’s call it what it is, genocide, is not antisemitic. Yuval Abraham, one of the film’s co-directors, is Israeli ano of course, faced backlash for his support of the Palestinians. But the story is Basel Adra’s, if we’re looking for a central figur...

Osgood Perkins strikes again and between this and Heart Eyes, 2025 has two hilarious, if grim and gory, horror hybrids. Heart Eyes is certainly a rom-com/horror hybrid; The Monkey is very much a family comedy/horror hybrid.The former plays more with upending genre tropes while the latter is rooted, form the get-go, in a family haunted by a specific trauma and this tends to lend The Monkey a little weight, if not gravitas.   By centering the tale around a fraught family dynamic between twin brothers that grows increasingly toxic with the machinations of a malevolent,  death-dealing mechanical toy (for the love of God, don’t call it a toy!!!) monkey that bangs a drum and on the last downward strike, someone dies. Fun and games, right? Actually, it kind of very much is. With an introduction that involves Adam Scott attempting to offload said monkey on an unsuspecting pawn shop owner that results in said pawn shop owner’s demise in an unforeseen manner, you know you’re in for a ...

“ Pa inting..is an instrument of war.” - Picasso “Shut up and act (or write or play football or do anything but talk about political issues)” - Too many people who know nothing about art or politics. I didn’t really do much to celebrate the Academy Awards this year because my mind has been elsewhere. That said, I did see all of the best picture nominees and a few others, but if I’m honest, I’ve weighed in on the movies I genuinely cared about. Well, except   Nickel Boys , which was gripping and used first-person camerawork to good effect.  Emilia Pérez was a disappointment that I’ll have more to say about, below, as well. I feel I should at least give these films some due. They made it to the nominations and while one is more engaging and challenging than the other, I’m reluctant to completely dismiss the other.  More to the point is that I didn’t watch the show this year. I checked out Conan O’Brien’s monologue and enjoyed it well enough, but I figured I’d catch the win...

  “Of all the forms of murder, none is more monstrous than that committed by a state against its own citizens. And of all murder victims, those of the state are the most helpless and vulnerable since the very entity to which they have entrusted their lives and safety becomes their killer. When the state murders, the crime is planned by powerful men. They use the same cold rationality and administrative efficiency that they might bring to the decision to wage a campaign to eradicate a particularly obnoxious agricultural pest…[S]tates that have chosen to murder their own citizens can usually count their victims by the carload lot. As for motive, the state has no peers, for it will kill its victims for a careless word, a fleeting thought, or even a poem.” - Clyde Snow in   Witnesses from the Grave,   p. 217 In my lifetime, I’m guessing that the number of  mass executions by order of various states numbers in the dozens. This includes the disappeared and executed in Arge...