MOVIE REVIEW: Zack Snyder's Justice League

Give the determined and reinvigorated 300 and Watchmen director four-hours, extra millions, and full creative control and you get this kind of beefy result. Zack Snyder’s Justice League builds the saga both the audiences and characters deserved four years ago. Nearly every artistic and technical layer moves with a different beat and flourish. Even with the problematic precedent this whole odyssey set into motion from a fan outrage/support standpoint, this new result is a positive testament to what this second attempt means for and earns both the creators and the consumers.

4 STARS, 2021, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 15, 2021Justice League, Zack SnyderComment

SHORT FILM REVIEW: Batman: Dying is Easy

The medium of movies fits the swelling urge to be big and loud. They are sensory explosions we love, but that only goes so far in that endless style vs. substance debate. No matter the noise or spectacle, in this critic’s opinion, story and character are what secure success the most. The crowdfunded Batman: Dying is Easy is precisely that example. The short film from Sean and Aaron Schoenke of Bat in the Sun Productions nails its characters without overplaying spectacle. That’s likely a lecture that we may very well revisit this very week with a certain hotly anticipated director’s cut fanning all the fanboy flames in sight.

2021, 4 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, SHORT FILMS, Social Media, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 12, 2021Batman: Dying is EasyComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Raya and the Last Dragon

But the “lies” work because memorable stories dazzle and impress eyes and hearts at the same time. Nestled in a completely foreign realm of magic and myth, the real-life parallels woven into the high fantasy of Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon couldn’t ring louder or truer if it stole every bell in the record-holding Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin. The movie hits the premium tier of Disney+ on March 5th.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

For the impressionable young woman and clearly smitten guy, played by Freaky’s outstanding Kathryn Newton and future West Side Story cast member Kyle Allen, all hope is far from lost after this first unified encounter. They get to do this all over again. Playing in the self-aware Groundhog Day and Palm Springs pond, their Mark and Margaret are stuck in a temporal loop, repeating the same sunny Alabama spring day that ends with the hints of a cleansing thunderstorm at midnight that never comes before the alarm clock awakens the restarted day.

2021, 4 STARS, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanFebruary 12, 2021The Map of Tiny Perfect ThingsComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Judas and the Black Messiah

Director Shaka King and his co-writer Will Berson, both prior specialists of television, have penned and lensed an appropriately audacious feature film debut that deserves reverence and reaction. Through it all, there is tangible grizzled inspirational force to watching the agitators humanize and refine their plight. To hell with any “product of its era talk” because this is a crusade that many will cite as ongoing today with much of the same potency. Taking much deserved latitude, Judas and the Black Messiah does not beat around a single bush with where the antagonistic blame belongs.

2021, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanFebruary 12, 2021Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Supernova

Harry Macqueen’s sophomore feature film takes its name from the celestial phenomenon of “the explosion of a star in which the star may reach a maximum intrinsic luminosity one billion times that of the sun.” We even watch the far off flicker of one occurring pre-credits. “Maximum intrinsic luminosity” meaning peak essential brightness, eh? Yes, that can aptly describe the very earthly power of Supernova’s loving relationship and the brimming personalities united in that bond.

2020, 2021, 4 STARS, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanFebruary 4, 2021Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Ultimate Playlist of Noise

There is a small delight many viewers may share with Marcus, the main character of Hulu’s The Ultimate Playlist of Noise played by emerging actor Keean Johnson of Midway. This writer is one of them. Marcus’s narration brings up his enjoyment watching the facial expressions and body language of people hearing any array of sounds. Be it directly or voyeuristically, he’s astounded and inspired by the captivation seen among those listeners. He’s right. Try it yourself.

2021, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, Video on Demand, Streaming, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJanuary 15, 2021Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Pieces of a Woman

Nearly every artistic element of Pieces of a Woman holds a fixation with its lead Vanessa Kirby and rightfully so. Co-stars encircle her aura hoping to get closer. They are met by a lithe posture contorted in guarded torment that holds back their approaches. Her icy blue eyes, arched by her dark eyebrows, hold dry from tears, hang open while lost in thought, and project stares when attention is gained. Of all the points of focus captured by director Kornél Mundruczó, Kirby’s hands are purposefully watched the most. Historical quotes keenly remind us “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” and “nothing good comes from boredom.” Pieces of a Woman finds places to condone those vices.

MOVIE REVIEW: Soul

Since Monsters, Inc., Up and Inside Out director Pete Docter doesn’t directly hide his envoys of empathy anymore. Honest-to-goodness people are once again front-and-center in his newest film, Soul, coming to Disney+ on Christmas Day. Its people may get magically spun into spectral vessels moving through a very uniquely manufactured system of the heavens, but they’re still humans being human. That said, with Soul, Pixar finally goes all the way with its streak. They evoke existentialism head on.

2020, 4 STARS, Animated Film, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanDecember 22, 2020 Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Sylvie's Love

A skeptical label Sylvie’s Love might receive is being called anachronistic. Such a descriptor is a compliment not a hindrance. In fact, it would be disappointingly out of place if Sylvie’s Love was anything less than properly rooted right where it is as a pseudo-time capsule. Ashe isn’t trying to insert a progressive modern agenda with revisionist history for current appeasement. The desire was a period romance with sweep, ambiance, and gloss. The look of the era and the look of love are all there.

2020, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanDecember 19, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

The narrative scope of playwright August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a setting of Black performers sharing their collective experiences in life that now go into their music. There is a precarious pendulum of friendly diatribes and combative challenges between the traveling band members of the titular “Mother of the Blues.” Their forum may be a lowly basement rehearsal room, but the expanse of their descriptive histories reaches generations farther than mere geography.

2020, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanDecember 16, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: News of the World

News of the World feeds off those carefully selected extra points of emphasis. You have Tom Hanks in his first western, and playing his true mid-60s age no less, for a change. He portrays a character who speaks with a keen sense of dramatic effect for his listeners. The actor and character occupy a movie that strives well to stay natural with believable aesthetics that are never gaudy. It’s grit without grittiness, and there’s a place for that in the western genre where not everything has to kick like 100-proof frontier whiskey.

2020, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanDecember 11, 2020Comment