MEDIA APPEARANCE: Guest on "Culture Junkies Live!" talking Film Critics vs. Film Fans

Facebook is the main place that I’ve come to know and commiserate with Kenan Cross, part of the Culture Junkies network of genre-loving content creation. Their YouTube channel and Twitch presence are outstanding. In their brand’s Facebook group, I play “the ringer” as the vetted and RT-approved film critic surfing in the discussion thread. Kenan invited me on recently to talk with his squad all about that work landscape during a time when the “critics vs. fans” debate couldn’t be higher

"Superman" Web3 Movie Experience from Eluvio Coming June 9th

Superman Web3 Movie Experience is a multimedia NFT for fans to own and to engage with the 1978 Richard Donner film Superman: The Movie in an exciting way. Through dynamic menu options based on iconic locations from the film, owners can watch the film in 4K UHD on desktop, mobile, tablet or TV, access special features, view image galleries and artist renderings by notable DC artists, discover digital easter eggs, as well as sell the experience in a community marketplace.

2023, EVENT, Home Media, StreamingDon ShanahanJune 6, 2023Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Wrath of Becky

Nevertheless, the murderous glee factor of The Wrath of Becky never fizzles out. The movie is super tight, unraveling its mayhem in 83 minutes and change, where four of those minutes are logos and credits. Not a second is wasted on fluff. With origins out of the way and better villainy present, this is a rare sequel that counts as a noticeable improvement from its predecessor, complete with an open door for more chapters.

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: A Tourist's Guide to Love

In different hands and with weaker goals, A Tourist’s Guide to Love would be a hot-and-steamy romp of debauchery in a hot-and-steamy country. There’s certainly a place for that in the streaming scroll for the Netflix-and-Chill crowd. Alternatively, there’s a place for cuddly chastness too. A Tourist’s Guide to Love respects its characters, its audience, and its cultural depictions with more tact and nobility than the norm, giving us a refreshing and relaxing PG-rated romantic drama.

2023, 3 STARS, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanApril 30, 2023A Tourist's Guide to Love, Rachel Leigh Cook, Scott LyComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Peter Pan & Wendy

Bless his heart, David Lowery has not forgotten the sensation and formative power found in the analog brands of fantasy. Constructed with earthy textures, Peter Pan & Wendy is a glorious realization and extension of make-believe play that welcomes an old-fashioned conscience. Lowery, in his second foray with Disney after his phenomenal Pete Dragon from 2015, brandishes his own creative streak with a divergent freedom and zero shame for doing so.

2023, 4 STARS, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanApril 28, 2023Peter Pan & Wendy, David LoweryComment

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 REVEW: Gringa

Fast-forward from Steve Zahn’s hey-day. Add a quarter-century of mileage to his bread-and-butter manchild buddy type and do what too few filmmakers have done over the years: Give Steve Zahn a lead part. Take his usual brand of rootless screw-up and give it central focus and real anchors. Then, let Steve’s charm radiate fully. Gringa rewards this actor’s worth with a real chance.

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: Air

Director Ben Affleck received Michael Jordan’s blessing and allowed Air to be a whiff at breathing in that legend again, a draw that cannot be discounted. Likewise, folks are coming to see familiar and reliable movie stars like Affleck, Damon, Davis, and Bateman spar. Those curious and poised to watch composures rattled, zingers exchanged, balls busted, and dreams fulfilled get all that and then some in Air.

MOVIE REVIEW: Space Oddity

All at once, this introductory mindset of dedication and gallows humor is both plucky and fatalistic. Exposing both curiosity and anxiety, Space Oddity inelegantly wrestles with those two prevailing traits. The realistic science fiction of its premise and the sunny gaze of the Rhode Island setting swirl up the whimsy. Lo and behold, we find out that quaintness has a limit when it comes to fulfilling the human condition.

2023, 2 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 31, 2023Space Oddity, Kyle Allen, Kevin Bacon, Alexandra Shipp, Kyra SedgwickComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Tetris

Early on in Tetris, Taron Egerton’s main character Henk Rogers shares an admission with his furious boss about why he put himself into greater financial debt to back an unknown video game from The Soviet Union he stumbled upon at a consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Leaning over and speaking low with clear eyes relaying bewilderment, he talks about seeing those soon-to-be iconic blocks still falling in his dreams hours and days after playing the game. Memories fill Tetris viewers, and they immediately picture the exact same thing.