Movie Reviews

By Bob Garver       Few film adaptations require more ambition than Homer’s “The Odyssey,” the quintessential epic. And perhaps no filmmaker has been more ambitious this millennium than Christopher Nolan, the man who told an entire story backward with “Memento,” conquered the superhero genre with his “Dark Knight” trilogy, and dominated the Oscars…

By Bob Garver       I am well aware of the case against Disney’s live-action remake of its 2016 animated hit “Moana,” namely that the original film is less than ten years old and doesn’t need a remake, and also that  Disney live-action remakes are lazy cash-grabs in general. And I agree with a…

By Bob Garver     “Minions & Monsters” is the seventh cinematic outing for the Minions, and the third where they take center stage, as opposed to playing backup for former supervillain Gru. The jellybean-like animated gibberish-spewers all voiced by Pierre Coffin are once again taking the prequel route, as their story is told by…

By Bob Garver     Krypto the Superdog isn’t very cute in “Supergirl.” I understand that the way the pup was rendered for this film involved taking a real dog (who probably was very cute) and slathering CGI all over his likeness. The result is a dog whose face looks unnatural and with whom I…

By Bob Garver       All-time-great director Steven Spielberg is back with a film built around one of his most popular subjects: aliens. From the man that brought us “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” comes “Disclosure Day,” a film about a small group of people deciding that it is…

By Bob Garver     With “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Michael” still ruling the domestic box office, I thought I’d give this week’s review spot to a couple of also-rans from the past two weeks. “Mortal Kombat II” The 2021 “Mortal Kombat” movie was a disaster that left fans disappointed for many reasons,…

By Bob Garver     I had never seen 2006’s “The Devil Wears Prada” until a few weeks ago when I watched it in preparation for the sequel. I didn’t care for it, mainly due to the off-putting character of Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep). I knew going in that the fashion magazine editor’s dialogue was…

By Bob Garver     The big problem with “Michael,” the new Michael Jackson biopic, is that it has the approval of the Jackson family. As such, we are going to get a very flattering portrait of possibly the single most controversial personality in the history of the music industry. The scandals that plagued his…

By Bob Garver     Prior to what I will generously call his “new take” on “The Mummy,” director Lee Cronin was best known for 2023’s “Evil Dead Rise.” Original “Evil Dead” director Sam Raimi had a new movie out earlier this year with “Send Help,” and he didn’t put his name in that film’s…