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Movie Review: “Arthur the King” Now Playing at Boone Regal

March 18, 2024 I’m not going to sugarcoat it: this was not a good week for new releases. The battle for the top spot at the domestic box office was a fierce one, with “Kung Fu Panda 4” in its second weekend narrowly edging out “Dune: Part Two” in its third. But after those two holdovers, the box office fell off a cliff, with newcomer “Arthur the King” taking a weak third place with barely a quarter of either’s take. Granted, the relatively small-scale production is not one that has ambitions of conquering the box office. It’s okay with being a nice little crowd-pleaser, which would be fine if it were actually more pleasing

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Movie Review: ““Kung Fu Panda 4”” Now Playing at Boone Regal

March 11, 2024 Since Po (Jack Black), the main character of the “Kung Fu Panda” movies, is known for his corpulent eating habits, it makes sense to compare the animated franchise to a sort of comfort food. These movies aren’t exactly “healthy” choices that send the imagination soaring, but they aren’t “junk” that people outside the target audience are likely to detest. They’re agreeable, but not spectacular. Fortunately for “Kung Fu Panda 4,” it’s arriving at a time when kids haven’t had a decent movie for a while. Even though it coasts on preexisting goodwill at times, it’s not the painful, phoned-in effort it could have been. At the start of the movie, Po is basking in his fame as the legendary Dragon Warrior.

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Movie Review: “Dune Part Two” Now Playing at Boone Regal

March 4, 2024 I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first installment of director Denis Villeneuve’s take on the Frank Herbert sci-fi classic “Dune” back in 2021. The sounds and visuals were great, and I understood why it won so many technical Oscars that year, but I couldn’t get invested in the characters or story, so I didn’t recommend the film. I feel the same way about “Dune: Part Two,” but somehow the dynamic has shifted without anything really changing. The characters and story arcs are still baffling to keep straight (and as with the “Demon Slayer” movie last week, this doesn’t make for a great entry point into the series), but the sounds and visuals are so awesome that I give it a recommendation. I guess I could chalk it up to going into the film with a little more familiarity with the property, having seen the first movie, but I’d like to think that Villeneuve has just upped his game in some subtle fashion.

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Movie Review: “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba – To the Hashira Training”

February 26, 2024 Prior to “Hashira Training,” my exposure to the “Demon Slayer” anime series was limited to the 2020 film “Mugen Train.” Well, that and all the cosplayers I see every day dressed up in the green-and-black checkered pattern of main character Tanjiro (Natsuki Hanae), but “Mugen Train” was the only media. It should be noted, therefore, that I am not the target audience for this movie. The target audience is people that are already familiar with “Demon Slayer” lore, especially Season Three of the television show. I was largely lost having only seen “Mugen Train,” and I can’t imagine the difficulty of getting into the series based on this movie alone. 

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Movie Review: “Bob Marley: One Love” Now Playing at the Regal Boone

February 19, 2024 It was a good idea for “Bob Marley: One Love” to open on Valentine’s Day. Not just because there hadn’t been a decent box office performer in weeks (and even “Mean Girls and “The Beekeeper” were only mild hits) and the market was ripe for a takeover. Not just because the holiday weekend needed a blockbuster and “Madame Web” wasn’t up to the task. But because the movie had “Love” in its title, it could dominate the couples’ scene on Wednesday and ride that insurmountable lead to winning the weekend. The result was a domestic take of over $50 million, enough to already make it the 2nd-biggest movie of the year, behind only “Mean Girls,” which it will probably overtake before the week is out. The film can be associated with a brilliant commercial decision, but not so much its creative ones. 

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Movie Review: “Lisa Frankenstein” Now Playing at the Regal Boone

February 12, 2024 I had high hopes for “Lisa Frankenstein,” whose trailers promised a lead performance from Kathryn Newton (of the gleefully twisted body-switch horror-comedy “Freaky”) and a sick sense of humor that might actually be jarring in a fun way. Then I learned the truth: the movie still stars Kathryn Newton, but it’s rated PG-13. Ugh, what’s with all these movies going for the wrong ratings lately? The R-rated “Anyone But You” didn’t need all that crudeness, it should have aimed for the PG-13 crowd. The PG-13 “Argylle” celebrates blowing away bad guys way too much for anything other than an R to make sense.

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Movie Review: “Argylle” Now Playing at the Regal Boone

February 5, 2024 As much as I enjoyed the fun, exciting trailers for “Argylle” that made excellent use of the film’s eclectic cast, there was one element that told me the movie was in serious trouble. Amongst shots of the cat belonging to spy novelist Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), onscreen text insisted that, “Once you know the secret, don’t let the cat out of the bag.” In other words, there’s a big twist in this movie. 

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Movie Review: “Anyone but You” Now Playing at the Regal Boone

January 29, 2024  Not every week brings a shiny new blockbuster for me to review. Sometimes I need to look to the holdovers. Sadly, I’m not referring to “The Holdovers,” one of the best films of 2023 that you should definitely check out if it’s playing in your area. I’m referring to whichever movie did the best at the weekend box office that I haven’t already reviewed, even if it isn’t that new and didn’t do that well. This week that movie is “Anyone but You,” which came in fifth place at the domestic box office in its sixth weekend.

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Movie Review: “The Beekeeper” Now Playing at the Regal Boone

January 22, 2024  Last week I wrote about “Mean Girls” and the problem of having seen a version of the movie before, which made it too familiar and predictable. I meant it in a very literal sense – there was a 2004 movie called “Mean Girls,” written by Tina Fey, with basically the same characters and story (though no musical numbers, those were a nice addition). Now I’m making the same complaint about “The Beekeeper,” but in a figurative sense. There is no other movie called “The Beekeeper” that resembles this movie or involves the same people, nor is this movie technically based on any other intellectual property. And yet you’ll know what I mean when I say that I’ve seen this movie so many times before.

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Movie Review: “Night Swim” Now Playing at the Regal Boone

January 8, 2024  For the first time since the pandemic, January means the release of a terrible horror movie in “Night Swim.” Actually, the pandemic only really affected January horror in 2021. It’s just that with January 2022 bringing us that nifty “Scream” reboot and January 2023 giving the world the instantly-iconic “M3GAN,” I can’t say that the horror in those years was terrible. But now we’re back to January being a dumping ground for pathetic leftovers that couldn’t cut it at Halloween. Following a perfunctory kid-gets-taken opening, we’re introduced to the Waller family. Like many families at the openings of horror movies, they’re looking for a new house.

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Movie Review: “Wonka”

December 18, 2023         A bit of autobiography here at the start: I grew up a stone’s throw from Hershey, Pennsylvania and my current full-time employment comes from Hershey’s Chocolate World in Times Square. Chocolate, its production, and its sales are all a major part of my identity. So I view media related to Roald Dahl’s 1964 children’s book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” through a different lens than most. For example, the first time I saw 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” at the age of six, I wondered why the whole world would lose its mind over a contest where the prize was a visit to a chocolate factory. I lived a mere ten minutes from a chocolate factory, and even at that young age, the tour had gotten boring for me. Eventually I learned that the factory of the movie was a gorgeous and twisted place, and then I was able to enjoy the ride (with the possible exception of the nightmarish actual “ride”), but it took about half the movie for my disbelief to be suspended.  By Bob Carver

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Movie Review: “The Boy and the Heron”

December 11, 2023         Anime legend Hayao Miyazaki has come out of retirement for “The Boy and the Heron,” a sprawling fantasy with semiautobiographical elements. Surprisingly, it’s the more grounded elements that work better, maybe because they’re lifted from Miyazaki’s own life. They’re part of his own story so he made sure to get them right before letting himself indulge in the fantastical portion of the film.   The film follows 12-year-old Mahito Maki (Luca Padovan) a few years after the death of his mother in a Tokyo hospital fire. His father (Christian Bale) marries his mother’s younger sister Natsuko (Gemma Chan) and together they move to the countryside, to an estate originally built by Mahito’s eccentric architect great-granduncle (Mark Hamill). I really was drawn into the story of the boy being whisked away to a new family life in an unfamiliar place, a position of affluence where he’s nevertheless incredibly lonely and broken. Then the maids showed up and the movie lost me.  By Bob Carver

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Movie Review: “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé”

December 4, 2023 When the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 forced several movies off the fall schedule, it was a pair of musicians that came to the rescue with two of the most heavily-promoted concert movies of all time. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” got the box office through a rough patch back in October. Now comes “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” to get it through early December. The box office shouldn’t need Beyoncé to get it through early December, Thanksgiving weekend should have brought about some hits with staying power, but where the slate of traditional blockbusters failed, the concert documentary is here to thrive.  By Bob Carver

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Movie Review: “Napoleon”

November 27, 2023 Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” did rather well for itself over Thanksgiving weekend, opening in the #2 position at the domestic box office behind the second weekend of the new “Hunger Games.” A debut at #2 behind a not-particularly-beloved returning champion may not sound impressive, but my prediction was that it wouldn’t even finish in the top three. The film is a three-hour, R-rated historical epic that isn’t getting great reviews or generating much Oscars buzz outside of the technical categories. I thought for sure its performance would pale in comparison to family-friendly fare like “Wish” or “Trolls Band Together.” By Bob Carver

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Movie Review: “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”

November 20, 2023 I’ve been referring to this movie as “Hunger Game of Thrones.” It’s a prequel to “The Hunger Games,” but the influence of a certain HBO fantasy series is pretty apparent with the casting of Peter Dinklage and the “Song of Ice and Fire”-like subheading. I’ve seen it as little more than an attempt to combine two franchises that were wildly popular in their 2010’s heyday, but audiences have since left behind, frankly with a bad taste in their mouths after underwhelming finales. Watching the whole movie as opposed to gleaming the advertising does make it feel like less of an ill-advised cash grab, but still not great.   By Bob Carver

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Movie Review: “The Marvels”

November 13, 2023        The fall from glory of the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues with “The Marvels.” This is not to say that this movie is the “worst” the MCU has ever put out (for one thing, there’s no M.O.D.O.K. in sight), but the franchise has seen better days, both commercially and creatively. I think the problem lies with its middling ambition. It tries to upgrade elements that had been previously relegated to the small-screen when it probably should have made the hard decision to downgrade some big-screen elements.  By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “Five Nights at Freddy’s”

November 6, 2023 Last month, I wrote about “The Exorcist: Believer” actually working pretty well as a taut kidnapping thriller until the requisite demon possession stuff kicked in. Now comes “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” which has the opposite problem: the kidnapping-thriller elements get in the way of the supernatural stuff. I think the difference is that I wasn’t exactly eager to get to the possessed children, but I am eager to spend time with possessed child-friendly robots from a family entertainment center. They can have my full attention, no need for distractions from terrified families.    By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”

October 16, 2023             Taylor Swift is the single most powerful force in pop culture at the moment. Every other musical artist is eating her dust on the charts. Television, upended by writers’ and actors’ strikes, is only doing well with sporting events where the topic of conversation is Taylor and her possible relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. On the big screen, audiences’ summer fling with Barbenheimer has cooled off with no heir apparent… except for Taylor, of course.  By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “The Exorcist: Believer”

October 10, 2023 The creative, commercial, and overall cultural impact of 1973’s “The Exorcist” cannot be overstated. Every Halloween, you’re bound to see and hear references to the film, from facsimiles of Linda Blair’s otherworldly-affected face to recreations of the iconic head-spinning scene to quotes of demonic threats that can’t be repeated here. The film spawned both sequels and prequels, none of which I’ve seen, but critical consensus indicates paled in comparison to the original. Now, a nice round 50 years after the original, comes “The Exorcist: Believer.” By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie”

October 2, 2023 Standard disclaimer for any and all “PAW Patrol” media: I am not the target audience for “PAW Patrol.” The target audience for “PAW Patrol” is young children and only young children. This is not a “fun for all ages” property that adults can enjoy as much as kids. At best, adults watching with kids can enjoy how much their kids enjoy it. But adults will not enjoy it for themselves. I saw the movie by myself, and did not enjoy it myself. But there were plenty of kids in the theater and I enjoyed how much they enjoyed it.   By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “Expen4bles”

September 25, 2023 Outside of what you see on the posters, the “Expendables” movies have never been particularly ambitious. Sure, it was great that the action stars of previous decades like Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, Antonio Banderas, Mel Gibson, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and Harrison Ford could come together for a series of action movies in the 2010’s, but the films were never more than just an excuse to sell tickets based on the actors’ names. By Bob Garver

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Movie Review- “The Nun II”

September 11, 2023             “The Nun II” is the ninth film in the “Conjuring Universe,” a franchise tied to the adventures of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, but it is the third in the series chronologically. Demon-in-a-nun’s-habit Valak (Bonnie Aarons) has made appearances in installments both earlier and later in the franchise’s chronology. In other words, not only has this villain been defeated before, but I know for a fact that she’ll be defeated again. By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “The Equalizer 3”

September 4, 2023 It has been five years since we last saw Robert “The Equalizer” McCall, as played by the ever-arresting Denzel Washington. In that time, we’ve had a pandemic, three seasons of the Queen Latifah TV series (not to be confused with the Edward Woodward TV series from the 80’s), and plenty of time to forget about this iteration of the franchise. I wish Washington and director Antoine Fuqua had forgotten about it too, because they both could have used the time they wasted on this movie doing something worthier of their talents.  By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “Gran Turismo”

August 28, 2023         Like its main character, “Gran Turismo” fights hard to overcome the stigma of its association with a video game. Video game movies have taken some big steps lately, both creatively and commercially, with efforts like the “Sonic the Hedgehog” series and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” though the genre still lacks that one ceiling-shattering creative standout. Unlike its main character, “Gran Turismo” ultimately can’t quite pull it off. By Bob Garver

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Movie Review: “Blue Beetle”

August 21, 2023 Having seen the best (“The Dark Knight,” “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”) and worst (“Morbius,” “Fant4stic”) of what the modern superhero genre has to offer, I can report that “Blue Beetle” falls right smack in the middle of the spectrum. It would be easy to write off this movie’s staggering averageness with a wide-brush line like “not a classic, not a disaster,” but I feel the need to stress the degree to which this movie is right on par. By Bob Garver

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