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?

MOVIE REVIEW: The Vast of Night

There exists a wide range of adjectives between the pleasurable place of “thrill” and unpleasant extreme of “terrify” that one could apply to stimulating movie experiences. Just like the films themselves from indies to blockbusters, joys or jitters come in all shapes and sizes. For the festival darling The Vast of Night being streamed on Amazon Prime, the proverbial needle of its excitement amplification lands on a very nifty word: TINGLES.

2020, 5 STARS, Independent Film, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanJune 1, 2020The Vast of NightComment

MOVIE REVIEW: End of Sentence

Gosh, that is such a smooth and stirring way to express something profound. Rarely veering to hardest of hard or the ugliest of ugly, there is much more of that homely wisdom to be had in Elfar Adalsteins’ debut feature film. Identifying the “rebels” from the “kind-hearted” is relatively easy. The challenges become to what degree agitation within the malcontent can be healed and where strength can develop next to grace in the kindly. End of Sentence is available on VOD from Gravitas Ventures and it is a worthy dramatic experience.

2020, 4 STARS, Home Media, Independent Film, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 30, 2020End of SentenceComment

MOVIE REVIEW: The High Note

Each time Maggie’s employers, the fictional world-renowned recording artist Grace Davis played by Blackish’s Tracee Ellis Ross and her manager Jack Robertson played by Ice Cube, summarily dismiss her to stay in her lane or fetch some inconsequential thing, The High Note gets better because the real talent is allowed to emerge. To love underdog moxie, or any moxie for that matter, you have to have it. The flimsy Dakota Johnson doesn’t. She, and the movie, would be better served by her getting out of the way just like her shunned Maggie.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Lovebirds

Here’s the rub though. For “hi-jinks ensue” to work and live up to its promise, you need strong and effective events to come before and after when that phrase is planted. Have a weak setup and the absurdity of hi-jinks after can feel like a jolting improvement or tail-spinning crash. Have a great setup and the hi-jinks that follow can either evolve or devolve the auspicious start. This “one wild night” romp of The Lovebirds has about half of each measure in that balance.

2020, 3 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanMay 21, 2020The LovebirdsComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Scoob!

One of the classic catchphrases of the old Scooby Doo franchise is the vocalized signal, often from the eager mouth of their de facto leader Fred, of “looks like we’ve got another mystery on our hands.” The new CGI reboot Scoob! now on VOD platforms answers that rhetorical realization with both possible extremes. The movie doesn’t have one and the canyon-sized narrative hole because of it leaves us more perplexed than satisfied with a shoulder shrug and a chin rub of our own.