Review: Men in Black International

by Tony Ruggio

Jettisoning all subtext of the original and heart of the third and formerly final movie, Men in Black International is definitely a step-down from the highs of this intermittent, long-running franchise. Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson don’t enjoy nearly the same chemistry that sparked in Thor Ragnarok, their personalities clashing in a way that can best be described as awkward, and not the good kind with bumbling and sexual tension in tow. It’s all so rushed and Thompson’s arc leaves something to be desired.

And yet, I couldn’t help smiling through half of it...

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Review: The Dead Don't Die

by Chris Feil

A few years back, Jim Jarmusch brought fresh life to the oft-revisited vampire genre with the sexy Only Lovers Left Alive. This summer, he attempts to do the same with the tropes of the zombie film in The Dead Don’t Die, drolly taking on our mindnumbed obsessions in the modern dissociative era. Should he take on another monster genre soon - who better to find the poetic ennui of a werewolf, truth be told - then he should hope it results in something more akin to his look at bloodsuckers than that of his flesheaters. The Dead Don’t Die is a smug stinker.

The film is set in Centerville, “A very nice place to live!”, a town small enough to house a single diner for restaurant options and with its gas station pulling double duty as its comic shop. News reports that the Earth has spun off its axis due to polar fracking is met by the townspeople with the mildest sense of alarm, at least as much as they can muster for a world outside that they just cain’t understand. But that small town malaise is devoured once the local cemetery starts sprouting the reanimated dead.

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Review Catch-Up: Superheroes, spies, gangsters, and street rats

by Nathaniel R

As ever we've fallen behind. Here are four pictures currently in theaters that didn't get a proper review or a podcast discussion on the site. File under better late than never because we didn't mean to ignore them. Would love to hear your thoughts, too... 

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Review: Dark and Tired Phoenix

This review was previously published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...

Don't they have any healing and creative rejuvenation among the super-powered mutations at Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Children? If so they needed them to lay their hands on this franchise for a few years before making another bungled attempt at the beloved Dark Phoenix storyline (from the 1980 comic books) within this movie franchise's 19 movie years. But that's a rhetorical question. If Dark Phoenix (2019) is indication, mutations cannot save this franchise.

When we return to our characters, much has changed since our last visit. Which is fine since who wants to be reminded of X-Men Apocalypse? The X-Men are now no longer shunned by society but held up as heroes. Professor Xavier (James McAvoy, phoning this one in... but then who isn't?) has a direct phone to the White House, like a Batman / Commissioner Gordon sitch on steroids. Their first mission, which serves as kind of a second prologue to the over and underwritten film, is making Raven (Jessica Lawrence) nervous for some underwritten/performed reason...

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Review: The Secret Life of Pets 2

by Ben Miller (who has small children)

What do we want from a film when it is obviously not for us? If I'm watching an indie about a life experience that's in no way relatable to my own, I can still admire the artistry and the humanity. If I’m watching a film about talking pets specifically aimed at children, I can enjoy it... but what am I supposed to get out of it? Films like The Incredibles, WALL-E or Wreck-It Ralph are “for” kids, but non-children can enjoy them on a number of levels beyond the bright colors, fart jokes or action sequences.  Those films dug deep into issues about family, loneliness and friendship and had an overarching theme to bring everything together in a coherent way.

The Secret Life of Pets 2 is not one of those films and doesn't try to be...

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