Fast X
SimilarBen-Hur (1959) Blown Away (1994), Ocean's Twelve (2004), Oldboy (2003), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), The Godfather Part III (1990), The Interpreter (2005), Zatoichi (2003),
Watch afterBarbie (2023) John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023), Meg 2: The Trench (2023), The Flash (2023), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023),
Let's face it: At this point, you're either in for the overamped, Saturday-morning-cartoon lunacy of a Fast and Furious movie or you're not. Building from its humble roots as a 2001 street-racing Point Break riff to the gargantuan action tentpole it's after a whopping ten movies (eleven if you count Hobbs & Shaw), the series has built quite the convoluted lore over the decades. There are dead characters who come back to life (Sung Kang's Han), living characters who can never come back because their actors are no longer with us (see: Paul Walker's Brian), sworn enemies who join the familiar just one film later. It's dudebro soap opera, fueled by nitrous oxide and every weird, bonkers thing the filmmakers can think to do with a car. Continue Reading →
The Prank
The living legend's vicious physics teacher is the only part of this dark comedy to make the grade.
(This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 South by Southwest Festival)
Between the release of a documentary celebrating her long and amazing career and her scene-stealing supporting turn in Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story, Rita Moreno definitely had a 2021 for the pop culture ages. Alas, that undeniably welcome career resurgence hits a major hurdle in The Prank, an unspeakably lame mystery-comedy-horror hybrid that director Maureen Bharoocha seemingly devised to answer the question, “What if we took Teaching Mrs. Tingle but made it even stupider?” The result may not be the single worst film in this year’s somewhat lackluster SXSW lineup, but it’s close. Continue Reading →
West Side Story
SimilarA Real Young Girl (1976), Chicago (2002), I ♥ Huckabees (2004), La Vie en Rose (2007), Rope (1948),
Watch afterLicorice Pizza (2021), Nightmare Alley (2021), The Power of the Dog (2021), tick tick... BOOM! (2021), West Side Story (2021),
Studio20th Century Studios, TSG Entertainment,
While audiences and critics often bemoan the plethora of sequels and remakes that litter the media landscape, retelling a familiar story isn’t inherently bad. After all, Shakespeare’s most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, was based on earlier works, and in 1957 playwright Arthur Laurents (along with composer Leonard Bernstein and lyricist Stephen Sondheim) adapted the tale into West Side Story, which Robert Wise turned into a classic musical in 1961. Sixty years later, Steven Spielberg has thrown his hat into the ring with a new adaptation of the material. But can he make a familiar plot relevant to the 21st century? Continue Reading →