Category Archives: Film Reviews

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: Manglehorn

Leave a comment

Excerpt: “Pacino is on a career high this year, delivering tender moments in his genuine performances. He can do cantankerous with ease, but he also injects his own personality into his performance, making it much more authentic. This film falls heavily on Pacino’s shoulders, making his character’s metamorphosis the center of the story, even when the pacing slows to a crawl. He does the best he can with they story he is given, relying on his great chemistry with Holly Hunter to get us through the particularly sluggish scenes.”

RATING: ★★★★★ (5/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Love & Mercy” Unveils Brian Wilson

Leave a comment

Excerpt: Brian Wilson’s life, past and present, has always been shrouded with a melancholy mystery. Decoding the man from the myth is impossible, and an ambitious attempt to do through any medium, but Love & Mercy succeeds in lifting (if only slightly) the veil the is/was Brian Wilson. Using a young Wilson (Paul Dano) and an older Wilson (John Cusack) to show the equally tumultuous time periods in the artist’s life, director Bill Pohlad manages to blend this parallel narrative to help explain Wilson’s rise and temporary fall.

RATING: ★★★★★★★★ (8/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Spy” Slays Familiar Foes

Leave a comment

Excerpt: One of the best things Feig introduces into the spy canon is a paradigm-crushing example of an inspirational female spy. Like male spies, females spies are often hyper-sexualized, forcing only tall, thin, blonde or dark-haired women to be the standard. With their impractical plunging necklines and foot-torturing high heels, they are laughably ill-equipped for battle, yet they somehow manage to easily overcome their opponents. Feig introduces a more realistic spy with Susan Cooper, one that shows us how intelligence and skill will always win over sexual manipulation and stilettos.

RATING: ★★★★★★★★★ (9/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Barely Lethal” Is Deadly If Ingested

Leave a comment

Excerpt: Barely Lethal thinks it has hopes of becoming a comic book film franchise all its own, but even with the borrowed cast from other such films (Avengers, Sin City, and X-Men: Apocalypse) and the rented elements from films past, this only comes off as a shallow parody of an homage to a film. The title itself is a warning reminding you that any more of this film is enough to kill you.

RATING: ★★ (2/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

 

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Results” Flexes Its Dramatic Muscles

Leave a comment

Excerpt: Results not only flexes its dramatic muscles, but also shows us the strength of its most powerful muscle: its whimsical, beating heart. The undeniable chemistry between Smulders and Pearce is only elevated by the curious magnetism that Corrigan provides.

RATING: ★★★★★★★ (7/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “San Andreas” Has More Faults Than Fault Lines

Leave a comment

Excerpt: San Andreas is a blue ruin of borrowed elements that even The Rock was unable to save. To say this film was not ground-breaking is an understatement because even as an escapist treat, this film has no traction. Any friction or tension you feel from the film is less the effect of the story and the characters, and more than likely from the shifting of the tectonic plates.

RATING: ★★★★ (4/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

 

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Poltergeist” Is Haunted By Its Past

Leave a comment

Excerpt: Poltergeist has too many skeletons in the closet, but unfortunately none of them add up to a particularly scary film. Despite the great talent and even greater source material, this film came off as a shallow phantom of its former self. Sometimes the ghosts of the past are too much to live up to in the present. With how unambitious this corpse of a film is, it would have been better if it had remained buried.

RATING: ★★★ (3/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Tomorrowland” Feels Like Yesterdayland

Leave a comment

Excerpt: Like many of Disney’s older rides (a la It’s A Small World), Tomorrowland is full of visual pleasures and sweet sounding platitudes, but ultimately you know it’s an innocuous attraction. Usually halfway through the ride you find yourself bored and ready to get off. You can’t. You’re trapped with nowhere to escape to and you are forced to endure this ride, whose uplifting message has just been soured by your inescapable experience on the ride. The only way to save yourself is to not get on it to begin with. Welcome to Tomorrowland.

RATING: ★★★★★ (5/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review – Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story

Leave a comment

Excerpt: The YouTube serial-based film Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story has come out for a limited theatrical release, but after seeing the film, its life might be much more limited than anticipated. As a horror film, it’s very run of the mill relying on jump scares rather than building up the suspense like its predecessor did so well. Like the film, any attempt at making this into a long-running horror franchise may have died with the characters.

RATING: ★★★★(4/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks

Feature, Film, Film Reviews

Review: “Mad Max: Fury Road” Is A Well-Oiled Machine

Leave a comment

Excerpt: Like our underdogs in the film, George Miller finally found his Promised Land with Mad Max: Fury Road, the epitome and inevitable culmination of the previous trilogy. This is the kind of film that the Fast & Furious franchise wishes it could one day become. As it stands, every car-based film will eat Fury Road‘s dust because none can hope to achieve this same level of thoughtful, bombastic frenzy that this film inspires. Every actor and cog in this well-oiled engine propels it further and further, making it an unstoppable, unapologetic juggernaut waiting to steamroll over you and drag you along for the ride.

RATING: ★★★★★★★★★(9/10 stars)

To read my full review, go to The Young Folks