Cinematic loops

 Elvis  What is Elvis all about? "Elvis" features all the glitz, rhinestones, and jumpsuits you'd anticipate from an Elvis movie, but it lacks the complexity required for a 2022 picture about the "King." Baz Luhrmann, a maximalist director who despises aesthetic constraint and prefers enormous theatricality, ought to be the ideal director for a Presley biopic, but he isn't. Luhrmann narrates the tale of this icon from the viewpoint of Colonel Tom Parker, the singer's lifelong, dishonest manager (Tom Hanks). A near-death Parker awakens by himself in a Las Vegas hospital room after collapsing in his garish, memorabilia-filled workplace. He needs to clear his name because he has been called a criminal and a cheat who took advantage of Elvis (Austin Butler) by the media. An IV drip transforms into the Las Vegas skyline, and Parker enters a casino wearing a hospital nightgown before reaching a roulette wheel. This is where Luhrmann's aesthetic language be...

Nope "2022" movie review What do I think about this movie  I was concerned there wouldn't be anything left to say about Nope, the latest film from Jordan Peele (Get Out, Horror Noir), starring Daniel Kaluuya, Keke Palmer, Brandon Perea, and Michael Wincott. In his normal style, Peele spins a tale about UFOs that raises more questions than it does. Similar like its main opponent, Nope draws your attention with minute, unnerving movements and ominous noises. Then it draws you in completely before it's too late to turn off the primitive adrenaline surge. Nope begins with a horse ranch off the San Fernando Valley of California's inland gulch of Agua Dulce. The Haywood family has been successfully raising horses for Hollywood for many generations. Otis Haywood Junior (Daniel Kaluuya, Get Out, Black Messiah) and Emerald (Keke Palmer, Alice, Hustlers) fight to maintain the ranch while grieving the death of Otis Haywood Sr (Keith David, You Might Be the Killer, The Thing)...

 Scream 5 Is it worth it? It may sound exaggerated, but it's accurate to claim that there were horror films before Scream and after Scream. That's the original Scream, not SCREAM, which is capitalized and unmistakably not Scream 5 or even 5cream, but we'll get to that in a moment. Because without first considering the enormous change that Wes Craven's 1996 film SCREAM brought about to an entire industry, it's kind of hard to talk about SCREAM. Just over a decade after A Nightmare on Elm Street gave slashers a healthy dose of supernatural dream logic, Craven—working from a script by Kevin Williamson—changed the face of horror once more by dissecting his own cliches, removing the guts and gristle to uncover the beating heart of a genre. Scream explained the rules to audiences, demonstrated each trick in detail, and then threw them out the window (only to sneak around back, snag the rule book from the dirt, and whack the audience in the back of the head with it). For b...

 Jackass Forever Yes, really: four stars for "Jackass Forever," a movie in which people are blown to smithereens in Port-a-Potties, strapped into centrifuges and forced to drink liquids until they vomit, threatened by bears and snakes, stung by scorpions and bees, and repeatedly bashed in the genitals by more people and devices than can be cited in detail in the sentence you're reading, lest it Let's live by the proverb (huhr, huhr! He used the dictum (pronounced "dict") that the site's founder cherished: a work should be judged by what it is and attempts to be. How successfully a film accomplishes the objectives it seems to have set for itself is indicated by the star rating at the top of a RogerEbert.com review. This explains why Mr. Ebert gave four stars to "Au Hasard Balthazar," "The Tree of Life," "Blazing Saddles," and "Raiders of the Lost Ark." When a meal is only a hot dog with mustard, it is not appropriat...

 Lightyear 2022 Watch Lightyear We were not able to find any streaming offers for this movie but you can watch  Lightyear for free online by clicking HERE The origin story of Pixar's " Toy Story " series character Buzz Lightyear is not told in " Lightyear ." It tells the tale of how Andy ended up with the Buzz Lightyear toy in his bedroom. You know, Buzz Lightyear  was the star of Andy's favorite movie when Andy's mother got him a toy in 1995. Prior to our being thrust into an animated space opera starring Chris Evans as Buzz, a title card informs us that "This is that movie." We'll encounter the Evil Emperor Zurg along the road, and we'll also discover the origin of all those catchphrases that people have been using for the past 27 years. I won't hold it against skeptical viewers who think this seems like a lot of money-grabbing nonsense, but I should note that Pixar has done this sort of retrofitting before. You might remember tha...

Turning Red This critic had a serious crush on a boy a year older than her when they were in middle school, when she was still a young adolescent. I don't remember if we were already dating when I made the stupid mistake of writing his name and some sappily romantic words in my notebook one evening, not realizing that my annoyingly overprotective detective mother would soon find the humiliating pad. The moment she snatched the notebook out from under me (I had attempted to hide the proof of my first love by sitting on it in desperation), I recall sweating in shame, terror, uncertainty, and panic as she began flipping through the pages in complete amazement and rage. Imagine my shock as I saw the 13-year-old main character of Oscar-winning "Bao" director Domee Shi's superb animation "Turning Red" go through a similar scenario with her own mother! The protagonist in question is Meilin (Rosalie Chiang), a high achiever who is growing up too quickly in her Chine...