MOVIE REVIEW: Napoleon

Shockingly and woefully, Joaquin Phoenix does not achieve a single one of those aforementioned personality traits of Napoleon Bonaparte to any compelling degree. You read that right– not a single one of them. There’s no sweeping speech destined for an Oscar nomination clip that wins over citizens, soldiers, or us viewers. Big political ideas pop without sparks. The fireworks and cunning strategy never make it off the battlefield, and any legendary swagger is reduced to the snivels of a lazy and insecure cuckold.

2 STARS, 2023, Home Media, Streaming, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanNovember 23, 2023Napoleon, Ridley Scott, Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Apple TV+Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: May December

While ambitious as a ripe tangent in borrowing a real-life scandal, the whole shadowing angle of May December overloads what was excessive enough as off-screen history to begin with. Applying a smattering of unlikely kinks and a confounding third act of insecurity swerves sinks the film. Haynes is left with a mood piece of examining taboo with more taboo. and it gets unattractively lost in just that very vibe.

MOVIE REVIEW: Killers of the Flower Moon

For better or worse, that’s a microcosm of the entirety of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. As helpful as Robertson’s plucked metronome is to fill voids and create a foreboding cinematic heartbeat, your own pulse rate ends up matching that placidness. No matter what heinous deception, jarring murder, or well-appointed finery appears on screen, very little in the film intensifies or accelerates beyond that methodical drowning dirge.

MOVIE REVIEW: Foe

The linchpin of Foe becomes Saorise Ronan. With a strong and near-Method effort at being constantly jaded and exhausted, Paul Mescal impressively spends the majority of the film withering in the wringer he’s sent through by Terrence. He’s going for broke. Meanwhile, the real palpable depth of Foe comes from Hen’s female perspective. Since the beginning of the film opened on her crying in the shower, our perception of Hen has been the bigger question mark than the stranger Terrence.

2 STARS, 2023, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanOctober 14, 2023Iain Reid, Garth Davis, Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, Foe, Amazon Prime VideoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Crusades

The Crusades reminds us that seemingly every generation of teenagers has an extreme party movie that seeks to display all the unhinged wanton behavior that festers behind the confines of school responsibilities and juvenile expectations. From Animal House to American Pie, you can pace a culture’s timeline by its rising and falling raunch level. Step forward to see that there are two ranges of perspectives that go into those types of movies.

2 STARS, 2023, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJuly 3, 2023The Crusades, Rudy Pankow, Alex MilanoComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

For the second film in 34 years, a new Indiana Jones film cheapens the perfect ending they already had. Make no mistake, the sunset ride of Indiana Jones the the Last Crusade was a “come back with your shield or on it” moment that cannot be topped. Yet, here we are, watching a studio milk an intellectual property they purchased after its peak for one more box office windfall. The producers are calling Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny a “one last time” type of excursion. It is indeed that. It is one last time to wish they left it alone or had a better story worth telling.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Flash

This movie was better off not slamming the accelerator through its narrative entanglements to the next action showdown. Miller and company are best in The Flash when they are not doing something super and addressing the bigger themes about their conditions and consequences. You feel the movie’s melodrama hit most not when it zips by you with a rush of hot air but in stillness when it wrestles with its proverbial speed demons.

MOVIE REVIEW: White Men Can't Jump

What replaces those external conflicts is internal angst from two men who aim to be more sensitive than competitive. Nothing’s really going to happen to anyone, outside of a touchy breakup or two, if they fail. That’s borderline character betrayal and counts as another miss. While a modern 21st century maturity against frank toxic masculinity was infused to be appreciated, there is an unmistakable edginess that is missing, top to bottom in White Men Can’t Jump.

2 STARS, 2023, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMay 18, 2023White Men Can't Jump, Jack Harlow, Sinqua Walls, HuluComment

MOVIE REVIEW: To Catch a Killer

To Catch a Killer unravels to become one of those manhunt movies where the pursuit is better than the prize at the end. Wild Tales director Damien Szifron provides several platforms for the central law enforcement characters to pontificate the importance of what they are doing to stop the present public menace. The actors squeeze every bit of seriousness they can, and you believe their motivations and intentions. Yet, when To Catch a Killer reaches its climax and it becomes the hidden villain’s turn to reveal their intentions, the suspense shamefully evaporates.

MOVIE REVIEW: One True Loves

One True Loves has one of those paperback novel premises that can only seem to work as a screwball farce or a serious melodrama when brought to the big screen. Wouldn’t you know it, the movie is based on a book from New York Times best-selling author Taylor Jenkins Reid (Daisy Jones and the Six). The novelist was lucky enough to have the opportunity to adapt her own novel with her TV screenwriter husband Alex J. Reid.

MOVIE REVIEW: Showing Up

To say Showing Up is watching paint dry or, in the case, clay dry is far too mean. Quiet is one thing and introspective is another. Do you relish the glacial anticipation and personal payoff of creative culmination or are you just showing up to the art show at the end, as characters do here, for the wine and cheese.

2 STARS, 2023, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanApril 13, 2023Showing Up, Kelly Reichardt, Michelle Williams, Hong ChauComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Paint

There was a measure of true cleverness possible in inserting a throwback maverick character into the present day. Paint wanted to bend a vibe with fiction and flexed too far, to a place where its main character would not survive personally or professionally in the first place. The surrounding characters chipping away at the fraud underneath Carl Nargle– an arc amusingly not all that different from the esteemed Oscar-nominated TAR when you really think about it– exposed nothing we could not already see for ourselves.