MOVIE REVIEW: Capone

That name brings forth a gusher of overplayed stereotypes and caricatures. If you think you’re going to see the decadence of the historical figure’s prime, you’ve come to the wrong movie. If you think you’re going to see another Ben Gazzara or Bob De Niro galavanting as the king of his own court, you’ve come to the wrong movie. If anything, Josh Trank intentionally and subversively pushes back against the romanticized urban legend of “Scarface,” “Big Al,” “Big Boy,” “Snorky,” and “Public Enemy No. 1.”

2020, 3 STARS, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 13, 2020Capone, Tom Hardy, Josh TrankComment

GUEST COLUMN: Resources for Watching Hindi Movies Online Through Kodi

by Maria Jones

Kodi is a wonderful application through which you can not only view Hollywood movies and TV series but for the Bollywood movies enthusiasts, it is also possible to watch Hindi movies online now through Kodi. New, old, and all-time classic are available here. It is a fact that Bollywood movies have fans all across the globe as these movies feature a wide range of vibrant characters, action, melodic songs, colorful sceneries, and romance at best.

2020, Column, Editorial, Foreign Film, GUEST EDITORIAL, Home Media, Independent Film, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 12, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Working Man

Movies becoming timely is almost always an accident. They’re made months in advance and can never reliably predict the future they will enter when released. The right match of content and happenstance can elevate a film’s mystique, even that of a tiny little indie that normally wouldn’t carry much of one at all. The award-winning Working Man, filmed in and around Chicago last year, debuts on VOD services today to a sheltered public facing jobless claims that topped 30 million in two short quarantined months. The distinctive part about this movie is that it displays a sense of workplace fulfillment that would still work if that bellwether statistic was zero. Timeliness only makes it better.

2020, 4 STARS, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 5, 2020Working ManComment

MOVIE REVIEW: All Day and a Night

Reaching those bold heights of bracing social commentary, it is fair and complimentary to call Joe Robert Cole’s movie more important than entertaining. Mark that goal as accomplished. The Black Panther co-writer uses not a drop of sugarcoating in his first directorial effort in nine years. The brutality against the hearts in All Day and a Night hurts more than harm subjected to any flesh. In that regard, it is also fair to question the place and mentality of this movie’s bravery during a current civil climate where negative racial examples do not need more perpetuation. That is an uphill battle without a welcoming core to embrace.

2020, 3 STARS, Independent Film, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 1, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Endings, Beginnings

Granted, messy people and their messy lives make for messy stories, especially here in the medium of narrative film. Not everyone can hold their noses to other peoples’ messes on display. Their pity or empathy levels have limits. Tolerance comes from the talent and the trueness coming together for the given story. Filmmaker Drake Doremus presents another striking, bare, and brave movie in the form of Endings, Beginnings. If you have the capacity to wallow along, you will be impressed. Plenty won’t and that’s too bad.

2020, 2019, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Film Festival, Independent Film, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanApril 16, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Trolls World Tour

Adding more weight from the original movie’s message of finding internal happiness and not changing for others wouldn’t take much. With equal simplicity and symbolism, the felt of this dreamy universe for the sequel Trolls World Tour is upped to include heavy quilts, denim, leather, satin, velour, vinyl, and more. The multiplication of said textiles matches an appreciated boost in weightier themes. What is ready and primed to delight can also move body parts other than your hips and toes.

2020, 4 STARS, Animated Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on Demand, StreamingDon ShanahanApril 11, 2020Trolls World TourComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Love Wedding Repeat

I am starting to become convinced that there will never be a movie wedding that goes off without a hitch, as they say. It’s cinematically impossible not to have something, anything, or everything go wrong. But, that’s the fun of all those movies, including the new Netflix film Love Wedding Repeat. There is always comedy to be had when a springboard event of enduring love can survive in every cringe, surprise, fumble, flub, and fail executed by the doting newlyweds on down to the drunk ne'er-do-wells.

COLUMN: Amazon Prime UK: The Best Upcoming Movies & Shows To Watch

There’s no better time for you to binge movies than the summer of 2020. With many people stuck at home due to the recent lockdowns and self-quarantine methods because of the COVID-19 pandemic, movies are what will save us from being bored out of our minds, which is probably why there’s been an increased interest in streaming as of late. Because of this, I find now the perfect time to go over the best upcoming movies this summer coming to Amazon Prime.

REWIND REVIEW: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

Big as a billboard in some places and as small as a mobile ad in others, the marketing imagery of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker touts the tagline “The Saga Will End.” There’s something to be said for finality, especially with a 42-year-old franchise as venerated and cherished as this one. The virtues of remembrance, culmination, gratification, and other such lofty notions loom so much larger when an entity is billed to be the last of something important. The movie in disc form hits store shelves everywhere today.

2019, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on Demand, VIDEO REVIEW, DISC REVIEW, 2 STARS, 2020, 3 STARS, StreamingDon ShanahanMarch 31, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Vivarium

Vivarium earns very positive credit for its premise and aim. Bending relationship dynamics of survival and gender roles around the middle class dreams of homeownership and building a family is, no question, both absorbing and ambitious. The social commentary is as frank as it is smartly bleak. The graying realities are well-masked by the colorful production dwellings. Their dreamscape trap of the Yonder development is rightly simplistic yet imposing.

2019, 2020, 2 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 28, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Stargirl

When you take a gander at Grace VanderWaal’s title character in Stargirl, you probably don’t think “unassuming.” The loud outfit seems goudy. The ukulele on her back reeks of ostentatiousness. And, by golly, that rat on her shoulder screams straight-up weird. Miraculously and sweetly, director Julia Hart makes all of this boldness as unassuming as possible, free of arrogance or pretension. The modesty of Jerry Spinelli’s hit source novel is intact and invigorating on this Disney+ original.

MOVIE REVIEW: Run This Town

Behind every political monster has a staff of underlings who have stories to tell and permanent stains on their resumes. More often than not, unless they are a featured mouthpiece or the eventual public whistle-blower, we don’t really see these people, even when we know they are there. Across the guarded podiums, pushy microphones, and invasive cameras are also the faceless by-lines of cub reporters trying to break stories and make a name for themselves. They too are dependent on the grinding political machine. Run This Town gives faces and voices to unfortunate minions and nobodies tied to the late and former mayor of Toronto mayor Rob Ford.

2020, 3 STARS, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMarch 8, 2020Run This TownComment