MOVIE REVIEW: Greyhound

There’s something to be said for a film that can constantly exude tautness. Some films will have stress and pressure, but not convey those traits with true tension. An element or two will have general solidity, but not have legitimate, durable steadiness. Like every battened down hatch on a warship cutting through its rough seas, the thrilling course of the new Apple+ Tom Hanks vehicle Greyhound throbs with tightness. Stutter, stumble or hesitate and a punctuating torpedo detonates your lack of focus.

2020, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on Demand, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJuly 6, 2020Comment

COLUMN: Top 10 Fascinating Netflix Movies and Documentaries about Business and Entrepreneurship

Many educationists have come to find increasingly innovative methods to deploy teaching methodologies. It is essential to know that education is basically defined as the process of facilitating the acquisition of viable knowledge and information which professionals and students can deploy and implement in their real situations. This opens a whole new avenue where popular forms of entertainment, such as educational movies and films, can be used to deliver a way of experiential learning that can help people to learn valuable lessons.

2020, Column, Editorial, GUEST EDITORIAL, Home Media, LIST, SPECIAL, StreamingDon ShanahanJuly 2, 2020Comment

DOCUMENTARY REVIEW: No Small Matter

Documentaries often carry a sharp specificity by design. The backers and filmmakers have zeroed in on a pointed topic or singular issue they feel needs a spotlight or, even stronger, a public wake up call. Sometimes, they downright demand it. The challenge of an exemplary documentary is to convince next to its natural aim to inform. Their demands need worth, especially if the subject is too narrow to the point that it is inconsequential. That’s where the documentary No Small Matter lives up to its title. The demand matches the worth.

2020, 4 STARS, DOCUMENTARY REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on Demand, StreamingDon ShanahanJune 30, 2020No Small MatterComment

EDITORIAL: Lessons on the New Future of Movie Theaters

With several regions of America starting to re-open (including my own state of Illinois and city of Chicago), it was time to get on the stump and arm the cannons. I put some of what follows into spoken word recently on an episode of Mike Crowley’s “You’’ll Probably Agree” podcast, but the issue has grown since then. Click into the multitude of links in the lessons for the deeper referenced stories. They are well worth their reads and your attention. The theme of this all can be summarized as cautiously optimistic.

2020, Column, Editorial, SPECIAL, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanJune 27, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Irresistible

Jon Stewart’s new film Irresistible holds a broad and powerful mirror up to the lies and guises of America’s election economy. Right when you think an outspoken personality like the beloved former host of The Daily Show is going to shout from his now-taller cinematic pontiff a chosen side or favorite, he remarkably doesn’t. This is an even-handed farce of finger-pointing where both political sides have dirty hands and the media in the middle is wholly and equally complicit. Stewart unleashes this cringing astonishment in a surprising movie that pulls your leg and also very rug right out from underneath you.

2020, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanJune 22, 2020Irresistible, Jon StewartComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Miss Juneteenth

Willed by Beharie’s solid lead, this small film is a gratifying drama fit for the holiday of its namesake. This feature writing and directing debut of Channing Godfrey Peoples (TV’s Queen Sugar) is an absorbing and honorable celebration of traditions, futures, culture, and family free of harsh judgment and wrongly-placed stereotypes that would have come from disingenuous sources. Miss Juneteenth has as much sincerity as it has struggle. The worthy themes ring true for a positive and willing audience that can pause looking down on pageants and see the bigger preparatory importance.

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.

MOVIE REVIEW: 7500

There’s just something about “bottle movies” that elevate tension a step or two better than films grander, louder, or flashier sometimes. Their draw comes from the mental mystery of the given confinements, and you don’t have to be a claustrophobe to feel that anxiety. It’s about the imagined suggestions one makes to visualize what they cannot see beyond the setting’s boundaries. Oftentimes our minds paint it worse than it actually is, and that is more than enough to get the pulse rate going oh so very well. The new Amazon streaming film 7500 joins those ranks as a choice little carafe of collywobbles.

2019, 2020, 4 STARS, Independent Film, Foreign Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanJune 15, 20207500, Joseph Gordon-LevittComment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Departure

There is an almost teenage-level of absurdity to it all by the time the finger-pointing sparks conflict. Too much torrid steam in The Departure is off-screen and too little rancor coalesces and festers to truly shock. Within its establishing transitions, the film drops a suggestive cover of “Where Did you Sleep Last Night?” but the whole movie is more Leadbelly than Nirvana with dramatic edge and execution.

2020, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, SHORT FILMS, Streaming, Video on Demand, 1 STARDon ShanahanJune 12, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Da 5 Bloods

In the same way this website touts “every movie has a lesson,” every movie also has its politics. Academy Award winner (damn, that sounds great to read) Spike Lee is never shy about his level of challenging civics, nor should he be. His movies are his earned and rightful rostrums. Stitched with the electrified barbed wire of echoed history, Da 5 Bloods is infused with warranted politics that make it more than its retirement adventure and war movie ingredients. With stern strength in this Netflix release, the rants of old men give way to the treatises of ghosts.

MOVIE REVIEW: The King of Staten Island

The “semi” in front of the “semi-autobiographical” label for Pete Davidson’s quarter-life crisis movie memoir The King of Staten Island is both ambiguous and chancy. Formally, the prefix is meant to signify “half” while it often means “partially,” “incompletely,” and “somewhat.” The adjunct is fitting. At its fullest and best, Judd Apatow’s newest comedy coming to VOD on June 12th is a collection of half-hearted beats and half-witted mischief. That’s it. Just half.

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?

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

BRINGING YOU MOVIE REVIEWS AND MORE SINCE 2010

CRYPTOCASINOS

TheVore.com Streaming options

Brilliantly

Content & Links