Author: Kasey Butcher

Studios often use this time of year to dump movies that they do not think will perform well at the box office, but the rise of streaming and simultaneous releases has provided an opportunity for quality films to perform well in January. The Menu, ... Read more

I watch five movies every holiday season: The Holiday, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, The Shop Around the Corner, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Die Hard. Die Hard is a Christmas movie—it is, after all, about the reunification of a family for the ... Read more

Catherine Called Birdy was one of the popular novels I did not read when I was young because I was busy trying to read literally the biggest books in my school library. Boy, I missed out. In the adaptation by Amazon Studios, Catherine, called Birdy ... Read more

In school, I liked Shakespeare, but I hated Romeo and Juliet. Sure, it has some beautiful poetry tucked in, but the story? Too much teen angst. Hulu’s new movie, Rosaline, based on the novel When You Were Mine by Rebecca Serle, takes a comedic ... Read more

Allison Janney is an American treasure, but her new movie is so poorly written I can only imagine that she agreed to make it to mark starring in an action movie off her celebrity BINGO card. That is the only plausible reason why she made Lou. Spoiler ... Read more

My husband is from Chicago, so I did not exactly have to twist his arms into watching The Bear, Hulu’s show about an Italian beef shop, but the show was even better than we expected. ... Read more

This week, I watched two family-friendly movies that involve harrowing feats and a whole lot of water. Although Thirteen Lives is not suitable for the youngest family members, it provides a much better story than The Sea Beast does. ... Read more

Netflix’s Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between follows the rise and decline of a senior year love using more montages than I knew was possible. I was once a young person, and even then, I’m not sure I would have liked this movie. ... Read more

In an entertainment landscape comprised of so many remakes and reboots, it is refreshing when a remake has a new perspective to offer on an old story. Father of the Bride, the remake of the 1991 film starring Steve Martin, leans less on the sentimentality ... Read more

In 2002, I wrote my first film review for The Waynedale News. A year away from a driver’s license and from my little sister’s birth, I was a sophomore in high school and, although I would never willingly go back to that age, there are still things ... Read more

I have reviewed several lackluster romantic comedies recently, so when I sat down for The Lost City, I did not get my hopes up. The new movie starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum did not disappoint and satisfied my craving for a good old-fashioned ... Read more

Amazon’s recent specialty seems to be wasting meet-cutes. In Book of Love, English author Henry Copper (Sam Claflin) is sent to Mexico on a promotional tour of his book, where the dull novel has unexpectedly large sales. Henry is met in Mexico ... Read more

The Netflix Original Series Inventing Anna follows reporter Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky) as she strives to cover the rise and fall of Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. Anna Delvey (Julia Garner), the “fake heiress” who took elite members of New York’s business ... Read more

Sometimes it feels like if you’ve read one psychological thriller from the last few years you’ve read them all. The same tropes pop up repeatedly—the full wine glasses, the dark pasts not disclosed at a therapist’s office, the disturbing events ... Read more

Scream (1996) is my favorite scary movie, and I would be thrilled to have a new installment every decade as long as Neve Cambell and Courteney Cox are willing to come back. I mean, Jamie Lee Curtis is still doing Halloween movies. The fifth Scream ... Read more