It was difficult to find anything to watch even a fraction as good as the second season of The Bear. I rarely review a second season if I wrote about the first, but the latest installment of the FX/Hulu show is so beautiful, well-written, and tense . . .
Snack food is subject to silly trends, but the longevity of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos is a triumph of food engineering and marketing. I did not know that the alarmingly red snack has a true underdog story. Flamin’ Hot tells the story of the man behind . . .
A new movie about NSA whistleblower Reality Winner tests how much more audiences care about rescue pets than their humans. Reality, based on Tina Satter’s play Is This a Room, tells the story of Winner’s (Sydney Sweeney) interrogation by FBI Agents . . .
This week, I watched two movies with incredible star power and fairly weak storytelling: Air on Amazon Prime and The Mother on Netflix.
Air the blockbuster hit–or whatever the streaming equivalent is–tells the story of Nike executives, Sonny Vacarro . . .
I was not a reader of Judy Blume’s books when I was a young person, because, unfortunately, I was a little snob who went to the library and found the biggest book on the shelf in the children’s section. It turns out that while I read Robin Hood, . . .
This week, we hit a dead zone in the Hollywood calendar. Finding a movie that looked worth the time was a real struggle. It seems like every story must be produced as a miniseries. At the theater, my best option was a movie so ridiculous that even . . .
This week, my toddler came down with a fever, which gave me plenty of naptimes to check out new streaming series. Unstable, a comedy, and The Power, a drama, take very different tones, but both offer social commentary and significant star power.
In . . .
In the latest Scream movie, now in theaters, the rebooted cast moves to attend college in New York City. When a new Ghostface killing (in a gripping opening sequence featuring Samara Weaving) hits their neighborhood, Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara . . .
During its initial run, the BBC drama, Luther returned every few years, airing just twenty episodes between 2010 and 2019. Although the show seemed to have a definitive finale, creator Neil Cross brought Luther back for a movie, Luther: The Fallen . . .
On a frigid winter night, I headed out for the first available showing of Cocaine Bear because my husband wanted me to review it. I asked if he wanted to come with me, but he clarified that he did not want to watch it, he wanted me to watch it. Cocaine . . .
In the last issue, I reviewed a romantic comedy starring JLo. This week, one starring Reese Witherspoon. They can keep their fashion choices, but I am happy to see these familiar leading ladies again.
New on Netflix, Your Place or Mine stars Reese Witherspoon . . .
A little comedy, a little action, just a smidge of romance, Shotgun Wedding, out now on Amazon Prime, tries to deliver a classic romcom with a twist. In the movie, Darcy (Jennifer Lopez) and Tom (Josh Duhamel) planned an extravagant destination wedding . . .
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, in . . .
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 . . .
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 . . .
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 approach . . .
October is my favorite month. In our home, it is a month-long celebration of cinnamon tea, cozy sweaters, and pumpkin beer. My pumpkin patch even produced an abundance of decorative gourds. I also spend the month preparing this movie review, a roundup . . .
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 . . .
“Showing in select theaters”—the dreaded phrase I thought had vanished in the streaming era reared its ugly head when I wanted to see Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It turned out that “select theaters” translated to a small handful of showings . . .
For me, anything with Zoey Deutch is a must-see. In Not Okay, Deutch plays Danni Sanders, a struggling writer who lies about going to Paris only to post a photoshopped picture of her at the Arc Du Triomphe minutes before a terrorist attack at the monument. . . .
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.
In The Bear, Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) inherits his family’s . . .
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.
Based on the true . . .
Based upon the best-selling novel, Where the Crawdads Sing is part coming-of-age story, part sentimental romance, and part murder mystery, set in the marshes of North Carolina. In the story, Kya Clark’s (Daisy Edgar-Jones) entire family gradually . . .
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.
In the movie, . . .
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 . . .
In Netflix’s Hustle, Adam Sandler plays Stanley Sugerman, an NBA scout improbably married to Queen Latifah. When the owner of the 76ers (Robert Duvall) promotes him to assistant coach, it seems like Stanley’s dreams have come true. Almost immediately, . . .
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 . . .
Just when you think that the true crime market is totally saturated, out come the dramatic miniseries adaptations of books and documentaries covering already popular cases. Although some, like Hulu’s The Girl from Plainfield, are so melodramatic . . .
In All The Old Knives, two CIA agents, Henry Pelham (Chris Pine) and Celia Harrison (Thandiwe Newton), who used to be in a relationship, meet to debrief about what really happened in a tragically failed rescue they were part of years before. When terrorists . . .
I am surprised that we have not been treated to more navel-gazing from the film industry about the impacts of the pandemic on production and box office sales. In fact, after a small batch of movies and limited series set during the early days of the . . .