Homage was clearly the goal of Danny Turkiewicz with Stealing Pulp Fiction. Matching Tarantino, our two leads of Rudnitsky and Soni are a mismatched pair of buddies with loser exteriors and ambitious interiors with their own acronym-filled lingo and hangout vibe. Jonathan and Steve are a pair classic QT chatty Cathys who incessantly talk and finish each other’s sentence. Choosing some easy traits to match, the movie is edited into several titled chapter sections, includes similar musical cues, and emulates some of the framing and slow-motion camera moves of Quentin’s motifs and techniques.

MOVIE REVIEW: F1

Right on down to frequent fireworks that reach a Blow Out level of enveloping, spectacular dazzle, the athletic and moviemaking muscles are flexing in tandem to a stupendous degree in F1: The Movie. Goodness gracious, you could bottle this movie’s testosterone and outsell Nugenix and burn the publishing presses of Men’s Health to the ground with its vigor. Through it all, there Brad Pitt is, glowing like a lithe, tanned, and tattooed demigod putting everyone else to shame.

2025, MOVIE REVIEW, 4 STARSDon ShanahanJune 25, 2025F1, Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Ehren Kruger, Joseph Kosinski, Javier Bardem, Claudio MirandaComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Familiar Touch

Filming for Familiar Touch was done in collaboration with the residents and staff of Villa Gardens Continuing Care Retirement Community in New York. Backed by casting agent Betsy Fippinger (Eighth Grade and Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret), 67 residents, 13 staff members, and 12 caregiving and geriatrician consultants were credited for their involvement in making the movie, granting a tangible and uplifting authenticity that we’re being shown a positive standard of care and not an entirely sugarcoated movie version, just to perk up a plot with conflict.

MOVIE REVIEW: Elio

Joining 2021’s Luca and forgotten old classics like The Fox and the Hound, Elio carves a formative path with a more careful attitude for youths to observe and absorb that could not be more essential and relevant, especially with pre-teen boys. This is one for them, and the effort is welcome.

2025, 3 STARS, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanJune 18, 2025Elio, Pixar, Pixar Punch, Disney/PixarComment

MOVIE REVIEW: How to Train Your Dragon

Maybe the animated one was training wheels for the day this human-rich one could be made with advanced technology. The inevitable comparisons will be divisive for some and a coin toss of preference for others. Either way, both movies are solid enough to stoke that fiery and spirit-stirring excitement for audiences new or old. Let’s show our own mercy and have both.

MOVIE REVIEW: Materialists

For a stretch of Materialists, confidence is rattled, the hope of love is lost, and any rom-com gamemanship ends, as a more necessary, heavy, and therapeutic arc takes over. Admittedly and appreciably, for as bracingly honest as this swerve is in Materialist to emphasize the aforementioned risks that embody the reality of dating for many people—luxury level or otherwise, it is such a downer of a turn that it threatens to mar the good graces established by that opening scene’s instinctual simplicity of a shared flower.

MOVIE REVIEW: Thirsty

In the central performance of Thirsty, Jamie Neumann lays this character bare. In each scene representing a defining choice—whether it’s a buoyant stump moment impressing the gathered public or a privately tormented decision—the actress shows emotional mettle that is tangible, mature, and impressive. Harsher truths and consequences rightfully burn here.

MOVIE REVIEW: Predator: Killer of Killers

Larger than that, though, what transpires bends time and expands on previously unseen lore for the franchise, revealing borderline revisionist prophecies to the history and purpose of the whole shebang and saga. They mark a progression that promises to continue in Dan Trachtenberg’s next live-action film, Predator: Badlands, coming this November. Love them or hate them, the implications made by Dan and company are awesome and huge, and precisely the mature and heady injection this franchise sorely needed

MOVIE REVIEW: The Life of Chuck

One could go on and on, playing out those hypothetical scenarios and more after the movie. If you can reach this plane of empathetic understanding through the abnormal twists and turns of The Life of Chuck, you have found yourself one marvelous movie. If you can’t, or swaying between bliss and death makes you cynical or uncomfortable, you might be a little dead inside. That’ll be on you and not Mike Flanagan.

MOVIE REVIEW: Nora

Amid all the pressures she puts on herself to be a responsible mom, flexing artistic muscles and sparking the creative synapses of music creates a new balance in Nora’s life. It’s safe to say every parent watching Nora needs to carve out some self-care time in their schedules to do their own just-for-you enrichment activity, whatever it may be.

2025, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanMay 23, 2025Nora, Anna CampbellComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Fountain of Youth

Putting those stars together with that concept surely has to generate some sizzle with the history and mythology crowds, right? Well, with all pun intended, leave it to Apple and professional retreading screenwriter James Vanderbilt (currently stewarding Netflix’s Murder Mystery series and the legacy sequel vapors of the Scream franchise) to go back to a fading Hollywood well, leap in, and find it dry.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Kiss

The Kiss (Kysset), the most recent film from Oscar-winning Danish director Bille August, a two-time Palme d’Or recipient, has finally arrived in limited theaters for North American audiences. Set during the onset of World War I in August’s native country of Denmark, The Kiss is adapted from novelist Stefan Zweig’s 1939 book Beware of Pity. Thematically, that titular emotion of pity from the source material courses through this film’s every vein.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

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