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...

Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness Watch Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness We were not able to find streaming offers for this movie. You can watch Doctor Strange Multiverse of Madness online for free by clicking HERE. The contemporary Marvel sequel has as many weapons as a spell from Dr. Strange. Consider all the sequels that " Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness " contains. In that you probably need to have watched that movie less than the Strange adventures that followed, it is a sequel to " Doctor Strange ," if barely. It's a follow-up to "Avengers: Endgame" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in that it makes use of action from both movies and extrapolates a little bit from the universe-saving choice the main character made in the first. It closely resembles "WandaVision," the television program that introduced the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's also somewhat of a sequel to Sam Raimi's films from the age when he...

Jurassic world Dominion  Watch Jurassic World Dominion We were not able to find any streaming offers for Jurassic World Dominion . But you can watch the movie for free by clicking HERE. What should you expect in the Movie When "Jurassic Park" was first released in 1989, computer-generated and digitally composited effects were still in their infancy. However, director Steven Spielberg's team gave them newfound credibility by using them sparingly, frequently in nighttime and rainy scenes, and blending them with traditional practical FX work. The end result inspired in spectators a sense of primitive awe and dread. In particular, the T-Rex attack was so masterfully planned that it caused the author to slouch in his chair with one arm lifted in front of his face as if to repel a dinosaur attack. When the chaos subsided, Spielberg cut to a very quiet scene, letting everyone hear how many spectators had been screaming in terror. This of course caused raucous laughter and a rele...

Thor: Love and Thunder " Thor: Love and Thunder " is essentially a victory lap for everything that filmmaker Taika Waititi accomplished with his previous Marvel movie, "Thor: Ragnarok," which was frequently humorous, stirring, and utterly energizing. This enjoyable sequel is still a force for good, with enough visual ambition and heart in front of and behind the camera to stand on its own, even though it uses too many clichéd flourishes and jokes. On a route to recovery, we come upon Chris Hemsworth's thunderous Norse deity Thor, our space viking hero. Thor has lost the gut he had in "Avengers: Endgame," going "from dad bod to god bod," to use Waititi's voiceover recap delivered by his still endearing rock-bodied softy character Korg. The Asgardian people have relocated to a port city called New Asgard after their home realm was destroyed in "Thor: Ragnarok." Tessa Thompson's King Valkyrie, their charismatic leader, has assi...

 The Northman It's almost deceptive to call " The Northman " filmmaker Robert Eggers' most approachable movie. Prior productions by the filmmaker—the puritanical hallucinations of "The Witch" and the lonely, mermaid fetishization of "The Lighthouse"—traded in conventional, ambient freak-outs for typical macabre American mythology. The strongest elements of previous movies are repeated in " The Northman ," albeit with less success. By drawing viewers through a fierce attachment to familial honor, it forces audiences to deconstruct oppressive patriarchal values, poisonous masculine heroism, and the foolishness of retaliation. Unlike in his earlier works, Eggers' kind of psychological shock is bolder here and more forceful in bursts, yet it hardly succeeds on the basis of boldness alone. The word "elevated" was disparagingly used to describe Eggers' style of horror when "The Witch" was originally published. With a...

Top Gun: Maverick An admiral refers to Tom Cruise's navy aviator Pete Mitchell—call sign " Maverick "—as "the fastest man alive" in " Top Gun: Maverick ," the breathless, gravity- and logic-defying " Top Gun " sequel that, despite arriving more than three decades after the late Tony Scott's original, somehow makes all the sense in the world. A similar sequence from "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation," in which Alec Baldwin's high-ranking Alan Hunley calls Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt "the living personification of destiny," also makes you laugh. Neither of these quotes from Cruise's co-stars specifically mention his fictional on-screen personas. Additionally (or rather, mostly), they are discussing Cruise the actor's enduring legacy. Since he is one of the last remaining examples of genuine movie superstardom from bygone eras, our fearless and consistently handsome action hero deserves a warm round of appla...

The Batman 2022 When The Batman's first trailers debuted in 2020, many people wondered how it would stack up against previous renditions like Zack Snyder's gritty and violent Batman movies or Christopher Nolan's more sobering adaptation of The Dark Knight trilogy. The Batman expectations The Batmanby Matt Reeves is the most comically accurate movie about the world's greatest detective because of its coming-of-age story, jaw-dropping action sequences, and incredibly realistic depiction of Gotham. It also stands out among the caped crusader's extensive filmography as an amazing movie on its own. Batman (Robert Pattinson) must look into Gotham City's underground to find The Riddler two years after his appearance (Paul Dano). Pattinson not only performs admirably as Batman, but also outperforms other actors who have played the superhero in terms of acting ability. Even though previous actors have done a better job of playing Bruce Wayne, this iteration of Batman is ...