MOVIE REVIEW: The Short History of the Long Road

The title of The Short History of the Long Road is plain, simple, and true. This is but a small jaunt of a bigger journey for this broken family. The flashbacks are just that: flashed for mere seconds. They show enough to throb the heart and that’s plenty. Any extended testimonials and cherished memories come out in small talk and stay small talk without a grand speech in earshot. What’s personal is personal and not for crowds. Big and lofty is the sky above it, not the grounded individual. Once again, that’s the wavelength: plain, simple, and true. Those are fitting and admirable qualities.

SHORT FILM REVIEW: Cherish

For swift storytelling in the artistic medium of short films, every word counts. The time to both make an impression and speak the desired narrative is scarce. One must say a great deal with little. To that end, go ahead and count body language as double or even triple the value to dialogue. Cherish, the new Chicago-set short film from the Splatter Brothers filmmaking team of Lionel Chapman and Ira Childs earns strong merit from both the said and unsaid on a multitude of levels.

2020, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, SHORT FILMSDon ShanahanJune 3, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Becky

The tale-of-the-tape of Becky is as preposterous as the promised twisted violence that follows. In one corner, you have the middle-aged comedian Kevin James taking a dare for his first “dramatic role” as the escaped Neo-Nazi criminal Dominick. He’s hulking, tatted-up, bearded, and armed with stern rhetoric and an itchy trigger finger. In the other corner, you have the titular Millennial 13-year-old played by Lulu Wilson of The Haunting of Hill House. She’s angry, mournful over the passing of her mother, and, due to the home invasion circumstances than transpire, motivated for every hell-raising level of vindication possible. Before Bruce Buffer screams into a microphone, who do you got in this cutthroat clash that hits VOD June 5th?

MOVIE REVIEW: The Lovebirds

Here’s the rub though. For “hi-jinks ensue” to work and live up to its promise, you need strong and effective events to come before and after when that phrase is planted. Have a weak setup and the absurdity of hi-jinks after can feel like a jolting improvement or tail-spinning crash. Have a great setup and the hi-jinks that follow can either evolve or devolve the auspicious start. This “one wild night” romp of The Lovebirds has about half of each measure in that balance.

2020, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 21, 2020The LovebirdsComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Capone

That name brings forth a gusher of overplayed stereotypes and caricatures. If you think you’re going to see the decadence of the historical figure’s prime, you’ve come to the wrong movie. If you think you’re going to see another Ben Gazzara or Bob De Niro galavanting as the king of his own court, you’ve come to the wrong movie. If anything, Josh Trank intentionally and subversively pushes back against the romanticized urban legend of “Scarface,” “Big Al,” “Big Boy,” “Snorky,” and “Public Enemy No. 1.”

2020, 3 STARS, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 13, 2020Capone, Tom Hardy, Josh TrankComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Arkansas

Let’s just say it. The subgenre of redneck crime films is a messy place. The “black hat” is almost always a crazy SOB engaged with a less crazy SOV “white hat.” Slickness is replaced by stains. Dazzle is replaced by dinge. Calling any of them “sagas” is too much credit and heft. Unless you’re the Coen brothers (and even if you’re them too), spicing up this slow-and-low movie barbecue takes some of that absent slickness and dazzle injected into either the filmmaking or storytelling departments, or both.

2020, 3 STARS, Film Festival, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMay 10, 2020Arkansas, Clark Duke, Vince VaughnComment

MOVIE REVIEW: All Day and a Night

Reaching those bold heights of bracing social commentary, it is fair and complimentary to call Joe Robert Cole’s movie more important than entertaining. Mark that goal as accomplished. The Black Panther co-writer uses not a drop of sugarcoating in his first directorial effort in nine years. The brutality against the hearts in All Day and a Night hurts more than harm subjected to any flesh. In that regard, it is also fair to question the place and mentality of this movie’s bravery during a current civil climate where negative racial examples do not need more perpetuation. That is an uphill battle without a welcoming core to embrace.

2020, 3 STARS, Independent Film, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 1, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Extraction

Call this a meandering musing, but it’s a tad quizzical how far apart the definitions of “mercy” and “mercenary” are despite their beginning spellings. There is not harming someone you have power over versus a soldier paid to fight for money. You won’t find those two words supporting the old “one hands washes the other” expression. Nonetheless, here in the new Netflix Chris Hemsworth vehicle Extraction one could wring a towel dripping with the unexpected mix of blood and suds. That makes for a messy and albeit entertaining proposition on the wiggle room to have mercy in a mercenary.

2020, 3 STARS, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanApril 24, 2020Extraction, Chris HemsworthComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Love Wedding Repeat

I am starting to become convinced that there will never be a movie wedding that goes off without a hitch, as they say. It’s cinematically impossible not to have something, anything, or everything go wrong. But, that’s the fun of all those movies, including the new Netflix film Love Wedding Repeat. There is always comedy to be had when a springboard event of enduring love can survive in every cringe, surprise, fumble, flub, and fail executed by the doting newlyweds on down to the drunk ne'er-do-wells.

REWIND REVIEW: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Big as a billboard in some places and as small as a mobile ad in others, the marketing imagery of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker touts the tagline “The Saga Will End.” There’s something to be said for finality, especially with a 42-year-old franchise as venerated and cherished as this one. The virtues of remembrance, culmination, gratification, and other such lofty notions loom so much larger when an entity is billed to be the last of something important. The movie in disc form hits store shelves everywhere today.

2019, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on Demand, VIDEO REVIEW, DISC REVIEW, 2 STARS, 2020, 3 STARS, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 31, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Run This Town

Behind every political monster has a staff of underlings who have stories to tell and permanent stains on their resumes. More often than not, unless they are a featured mouthpiece or the eventual public whistle-blower, we don’t really see these people, even when we know they are there. Across the guarded podiums, pushy microphones, and invasive cameras are also the faceless by-lines of cub reporters trying to break stories and make a name for themselves. They too are dependent on the grinding political machine. Run This Town gives faces and voices to unfortunate minions and nobodies tied to the late and former mayor of Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

2020, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 8, 2020Run This TownComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Burden

It is very relevant and very opportune how the true-to-life main character’s last name fittingly became a perfect title for this kind of movie. Call it telling. Call it fate even. One could also call it a warning. Burden is as dramatic and uncomfortable as the many layers of the namesake word itself. The winner of the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival finally makes its theatrical bow nearly two years after its praised debut.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

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