MOVIE REVIEW: Babylon

The audience’s constitution will be the deciding factor on Babylon’s wide gamut of pungent engagement and raging spectacle. This juxtaposition of the carefree and zany with the dirty and dark underneath can very easily be too much. Any twinkling enchantment is met with bracing hardness. Any gleaming art is met with harsh repulsiveness. Extend this blaring back-and-forth of lift and defeat for over three hours, and Babylon can be as exhausting and unfocused as it is impressive. Good luck coming down from that high or out of that fog.

MOVIE REVIEW: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Luckily, as aforementioned, the sleuth takes it from there and he’s a hoot. With every “fiddlesticks” and “hell’s bells” exasperation, Daniel Craig and his slim cravats flip everything about Glass Onion for a loop every chance he gets. As if playing James Bond for a generation wasn’t iconic enough, the 54-year-old Brit has carved out another signature role we cannot get enough of that will define his career. Savoring this charm with the right cases and opposing actors to work against, he and Rian Johnson can rotate this party for decades without wearing out either of their welcomes.

MOVIE REVIEW: Devotion

Without question, Devotion is still a movie that paints its own brushstrokes of history and fills in cracks for engagement. The real story, especially in a case like this, will always be larger than the movie. Look no further than the official citation that accompanied Jesse Brown’s awarding of the Distinguished Flying Cross. In different hands, Devotion would be a Michael Bay fireworks show of grandiose noise. Director J.D. Dillard proves a story of proper hero worship can reach rousing and patriotic heights without screaming to high heaven. Once again, look no further than that perfect title and what it stands for in all its places.

2022, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanNovember 22, 2022Devotion, Glen Powell, Jonathan Majors, J.D. Dillard, Jesse L. Brown, NavyComment

MOVIE REVIEW: The Fabelmans

Extending its fervent love of filmmaking, The Fabelmans begs the question of how magicians find their magic. It assuredly posits that the answer will be a humble origin born from the nuclear home, especially for the most commercially successful movie director of all-time. Through this very personal film, director Steven Spielberg puts his pants on one leg at a time like everyone else to show how one legendary magician remembers and treasures their own story. Since it is Spielberg after all, permission was granted to go ahead and tell that tale with a little magic of its own.

2022, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanNovember 22, 2022Steven Spielberg, The FabelmansComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Viewers and fans will contemplate whether Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was the best Ryan Coogler and company could have done with their tragic circumstances. They will wonder if this pivot and royal escalation was the right approach. At some point, all of those questions (and others) have dual contexts between what they mean on-screen and off. Those questions also do not have a universal best, right, or perfect answer. For better or worse, we are now past “must” and the show emphatically goes on.

MOVIE REVIEW: Armageddon Time

The merit of this story of formative failure can only be truly assessed by whether this teenage proxy of the filmmaker himself turned out alright after the credits roll and history continued forward. One can learn by failure only if they learn. Like the main character, the submission of the movie itself does not put forth enough fight for earned growth. If Armageddon Time is the sum total of James Gray’s regret, then it is a weak indictment that comes off little better than someone saying “I had a Black friend once.”

2022, 2 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanNovember 4, 2022Armageddon TimeComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Till

Till is a heartbreaking and meaningful film presented almost entirely through a mother’s point of view. Any mother of any background will tell you that one of, if not, the most ever-present emotions is worry. Debilitating considerations and worst case scenarios often percolate and betray otherwise happy thoughts and sweet moments. All too often, it’s a mental gear that cannot be easily turned off. One of those flustering pauses begins the film and an agonizing tone for Till is set right away.

2022, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanOctober 16, 2022Till, Danielle DeadwylerComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Blonde

The controversial new film Blonde swirls surreal cinematic brushstrokes meant to express the hushed nightmares beyond the celebrity dreams of Norma Jean Mortenson and compose a reminiscent and heartbreaking portrait of the legendary star. The audiences’ applause of adoration is replaced by cries of anguish and pain often unseen by anyone. It is those tears that paint this film. For better or worse, those tears are what you now remember more than the smiles when it comes to Marilyn Monroe.

2022, 5 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanSeptember 23, 2022Blonde, Ana de Armas, Andrew Dominik, NetflixComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Fall

Sometimes, the simplest premises are all you need, and Scott Mann’s thriller Fall has that going for it in spades. Long has the subgenre of survival thrillers flourished in this area. By ascending a 2,000 foot antenna in the desert (masterfully so in its own perfect teaser trailer), Mann and his co-writer Jonathan Frank have picked a unique and uncomplicated setting. The film’s characters and camera explore its peculiarity and scale. True to its name, Fall’s plot exploits mortal fears and gets creative with the desperate measures people reach to keep kicking and screaming with life.

2022, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanAugust 11, 2022Fall, Grace Fulton, Virginia GardnerComment

MOVIE REVIEW: DC League of Super-Pets

With its buoyant humor and stellar energy, DC League of Super-Pets is the finest pampering treat we’re going to get and it’s a welcome one, even if a treat like this is a tad on the unhealthy side. With no apologies to Joss Whedon, Zack Snyder, or anyone else, it took bringing in a bunch of animal characters, the writers of The LEGO Batman Movie, and shifting to animation to give us the best theatrical Justice League movie we’ve had to date.

MOVIE REVIEW: My Old School

Combining Cumming’s lifting presence, snippets of archival TV coverage, and the animated sequences, My Old School has beguiling charm mirroring the fascinating central figure and the wry smiles on the faces of the Bearsden alumni telling their yarns. Viewers will absorb this tall tale and ask how much fraudulence is either acceptable or too much in a true-life “fake it until you make it” story. There is an irreverent delight to be had measuring that scale person-to-person and case-by-case.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Gray Man

Both men are stupendously deadly in their own ways. Seen and unseen pushers and handlers with unreliable agendas have tied hands, and forced ones too, for the repercussions to come. Pit these two men and their motives against each other, and the unpredictability ignites itself in The Gray Man. Wall to wall, the Russos have unleashed what may stand as the best pure action movie of 2022.

EVERY MOVIE HAS A LESSON

by Don Shanahan

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