Movie Reviews Archives

MOVIE REVIEW: The Drama

By Bob Garver Good news, grown-ups, even though most of the screens at your local theater are probably still devoted to “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” there’s a decent option for adults in one of the other houses. I’m convinced that “The Drama” has stayed in the top three at the domestic box office for the past two weekends by reeling in parents who don’t want to watch Mario with their kids, but don’t want to leave the theater. Or it could be good advertising, good word-of-mouth, good reviews, or other non-cynical reasons. The film follows Charlie (Robert Pattinson) and Emma (Zendaya), a nauseatingly-cute Boston-area couple a week away from their wedding. He’s a bit of a creep and she doesn’t talk much about her military-family upbringing, but they’re sure they can learn to live with each other’s foibles, after all, they’re in love. Hopefully it’s not much of a spoiler to say that their love will be tested over the course of the film as they deal with, well, drama. That drama first rears its head at a couples’ dinner with friends Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and Rachel (Alana Haim). Rachel has the bright idea to have …

By Bob Garver 2023 brought audiences “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” by far the most successful cinematic adaptation of a video game ever. It was a wonder how appealing the property was with vibrant, colorful animation and respect for both its source material and its audience. I couldn’t bring myself to recommend the film, as the story, action, characters, and humor never really “came together” for me, but it was definitely a step in the right direction. In that film, plumber brothers Mario (Chris Pratt) and Luigi (Charlie Cox) stumbled upon the Mushroom Kingdom, led by Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy), who they saved from having to marry Bowser (Jack Black), king of the evil Koopas. They also aligned with headstrong ape Donkey Kong, but he’s not in play here. The brothers and Peach were hailed as heroes, while Bowser was ultimately shrunk down and imprisoned in a jar. This film starts out by introducing some new characters. Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson) rules over a planet of childlike stars in another galaxy. She’s abducted by Bowser Jr. (Benny Safdie), who needs to harness her powers to activate a doomsday weapon. But first, there’s the matter of rescuing his …

By Bob Garver It has been just over ten years since viewers were first introduced to the work of sci-fi author Andy Weir with Ridley Scott’s “The Martian.” In that film, a scientist (Matt Damon) was stuck on a planet millions of miles from Earth and forced to use his wits to survive against near-insurmountable odds, often punctuating his actions with smart-aleck remarks that only he could hear. New Weir adaptation “Project Hail Mary” is different. In this film, a scientist (Ryan Gosling) is stuck on a spaceship millions of miles from Earth and forced to use his wits to survive against near-insurmountable odds, often punctuating his actions with smart-aleck remarks that only he can hear… until he has an alien buddy that can hear them. Dr. Ryland Grace (Gosling) is on mission to save the Sun (and consequently Earth) from a bacteria that is severely diminishing its output. He’s not what you’d call a “likely” hero (just a schoolteacher with some controversial theories), and he doesn’t exactly “volunteer” for the mission. Sketchy mission organizer Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) has to use some nefarious means to get him on the ship, but only because she truly believes his …

Written by: Bob Garver The 2020’s haven’t been kind to once-great animation giant Pixar, at least with its original titles. “Onward” had its box office cut down by the pandemic. Three straight movies had to forgo theatrical releases and go straight to Disney+. “Lightyear” was the first movie from the studio that I couldn’t bring myself to recommend. That movie, along with passable-but-middling efforts “Elemental” and “Elio” were all unable to win a single weekend at the domestic box office. Yes, “Inside Out 2” made more money domestically than any movie in the last three years, but that was an established property. Pixar needs an original hit to pull itself out of its rut, and I’m happy to report that “Hoppers” is just the movie to do it. The story follows outspoken college student and animal-lover Mabel (Piper Curda) as she tries to save the glade near her home from getting bulldozed at the behest of Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) to make room for a new highway. She’d have a better case if there were any animals making their home in the glade, but she’s sure that if the land can be protected, the animals will come. What …

March 3, 2026 Boone, NC – March 3, 2026 -The film, as expected, opens with a violent pre-title sequence. A young couple (Jimmy Tatro and Michelle Randolph) check into the old house of original co-killer Stu Macher (Matthew Lillard), now a rental property for fans of murder scenes. Spooky surprises are hidden throughout the house, including a robot wearing the iconic Ghostface costume. Eventually a non-robot Ghostface shows up, ready for some slashing. It’s not a lock that the couple will be killed like so many pre-title sequence characters before them, but… I didn’t see them bucking the trend.

February 24, 2026 Boone, NC – February 24, 2026 -The film did well because it had stamina and passionate support. Now sequel “I Can Only Imagine 2” has also debuted in the #3 position, behind the second weekends of both “Wuthering Heights” and “GOAT.” Will it have the stamina and support to pull off a similarly impressive showing? Probably not, but only time will tell.

February 17, 2026 Boone, NC – February 17, 2026 – “Wuthering Heights” is based on a classic novel by Emily Brontë. I’ve never read the novel, which is probably for the best. Reports of the movie differing from the novel are actually quite relieving to me. They’re relieving in the sense that I do not have to lose respect for people who like the novel, which I would do if this movie were any indication of its quality. I’m fine with not judging a book by its movie, especially when the movie is this terrible.

Written by: Bob Garver Audiences largely left last June’s zombie threequel “28 Years Later” thinking the same thing, “That was a good movie, but what the heck was up with that ending?” They were referring to the last-minute saving of young protagonist Spike (Alfie Williams) from a hoard of Infected by a gang of blonde-wigged, tracksuit-wearing ruffians led by long-missing earlier character Jimmy (Jack O’Connell). The tone of the sequence was one of stylized action, which clashed with the more ominous, meditative horror (short of the obvious Infected attacks) of the rest of the movie. Now, a mere seven months later, “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” provides answers as to exactly what the heck was up with that ending. It turns out that the gang, known as The Fingers (because together they form a mighty fist), while they like to take out the Infected, aren’t much kinder to uninfected humans. They’re a cult of serial killers, all stripped of their original names and now called Jimmy, who serve a Satanic deity known as Old Nick. O’Connell’s leader, now going by the name Sir Lord Jimmy Crystal, agrees to take in Spike if he can kill a Jimmy …

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”

By Bob Garver From its ridiculous opening scene, there is little denying that “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is one of the stupidest movies of 2025. Its only real competition comes from Disney’s live-action “Snow White” remake thinking that its Dwarfs were fit for human eyesight. And it’s not even the fun kind of stupid horror movie. It was never really on the table for this to be a “good” horror movie like “Sinners,” but it could have at least been an interesting flavor of stupid. The potential for such flavor is at least present in the opening scene, but the movie squanders even that prospect fairly quickly. In the opening scene, set in 1982, morose young Charlotte (Audrey Lynn Marie) eschews every other entertaining aspect of children’s pizza emporium Freddy Fazbear’s to wait for her favorite animatronic character. She turns her attention long enough to notice a boy being abducted (as would later become common at Freddy’s) and tries to alert parents at nearby tables, but none will listen to her. If her warnings had caused a deadly panic, then maybe that could have been a plausible foundation for a horror movie, but no, the movie seriously …

October 8, 2025 A popular criticism I’ve heard about “The Smashing Machine” is that it tries too hard to subvert expectations. I assume that this is a reference to the way the film follows mixed martial artist Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) on his journey not to a major win, but to his first professional loss. The film is building to a milestone in Kerr’s life that may not be pleasant, but is undeniably important. But I came out of the film more concerned about another expectation the film subverted: the expectation that it not put me to sleep.

September 29, 2025 Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson is known as a top-tier talent without top-tier recognition. None of his movies have made more than $50 million at the domestic box office, and despite 11 nominations, he’s never won himself an Academy Award (a combined three Oscar wins have come from his films, including Daniel Day-Lewis as Best Actor for 2007’s “There Will Be Blood,” but I’m talking about Anderson personally). “One Battle After Another” seems to represent an attempt by Anderson to step up his game, both commercially and creatively. The result is a film that is highly likely to give him his first blockbuster, and yes, could very well end his losing streak at the Oscars.

September 23, 2025 Jokes linking football and religion, especially Christianity, are common. “One gets Americans to sit attentively for hours every Sunday, the other is religion.” “Christian athletes always thank God when they win, never blame Him when they lose.” And of course, “WW(FSDJ)D? – What Would (Football Star Du Jour) Do?” With “Him,” it’s like writer/director Justin Tipping went and made a whole movie out of these jokes. But there’s a big problem: the movie isn’t supposed to be a comedy, it’s supposed to be a horror movie.

September 16, 2025 Ah, “Demon Slayer,” the anime franchise that comes out with a new movie about once every two years with seasons’ worth of television between the movies. I don’t keep up with the series, which admittedly puts me outside the film’s target audience of its existing fanbase. If you do follow “Demon Slayer,” you’ll almost certainly get more out of “Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle” than I did, since you won’t spend half the movie asking who most of the characters are and how much is supposed to be known about them.

September 8, 2025 A few days before I saw “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” a friend of mine asked me about my plans for the weekend. I told her that I planned to see the film, and I was excited. When she asked me why I was excited to see yet another entry in the generally-middling “Conjuring” series, I blurted out, “They make such a cute couple!” “They” of course being Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, respectively. These fictionalized tales of their cases sell themselves on demon- and possession-related horror, not charming family dynamics. Yet whether by design, by accident, or by default, the Warrens as characters are what this series does best.

August 18, 2025 In a weekend that I could have sworn would be dominated by family-friendly franchise fare “Freakier Friday,” it was R-rated horror movie “Weapons” pulling off the upset. What happened here? I know stars Julia Garner and Josh Brolin have important roles in the MCU, but were they such draws without Garner in silver polymer or Brolin with an oversized chin? Did horror fans flock to the film because of writer/director Zach Cregger? His last film, 2022’s “Barbarian,” has already had its entire domestic box office run eclipsed by “Weapons” in its first weekend alone. An inundation of advertising? I knew the film was coming, but I’d had “Freakier Friday” shoved down my throat for months thanks to the Disney promotional machine.

August 6, 2025 I have fond memories of “The Bad Guys” from 2022. The opening scene was an extended “Pulp
Fiction” reference, which I was not expecting to see in an animated kids’ movie. It put me in a good mood for the rest of the movie, which was standard “villains eventually learn to be good” fare, albeit with a slick style and nary an irritating Minion in sight. “The Bad Guys 2” doesn’t have the cushion of an
extended reference to one of my favorite very-R-rated movies, so it has to get by on style and humor
alone. It succeeds, but to a lesser degree. When we last saw Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), and tarantula Ms. Webs (Awkwafina), they had renounced their heist-crew ways after defeating villainous guinea pig Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade) with some help from Governor Foxington (Zazie Beetz), herself a reformed master criminal.

July 31, 2025 The “First Steps” part of the title of the new “Fantastic Four” movie is misleading. We don’t see the superhero quartet take their first steps, not as changed individuals and not as a team. The movie takes place four years after a space anomaly altered the DNA of astronauts Reed “Mister Fantastic” Richards (Pedro Pascal), Ben “Thing” Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Johnny “Human Torch” Storm (Joseph Quinn) and his sister, Sue “Invisible Woman” Storm (Vanessa Kirby). Fortunately, the alterations turned out to be mostly positive, and the team uses their newfound gifts to better the planet of Earth-828.

July 22, 2025 I’ve never seen 1997’s “I Know What You Did Last Summer” all the way through. 11-year-old me was too young to see the R-rated slasher in theaters, which was just as well because I did see a trailer and lost many nights’ sleep over the killer’s deadly fishing hook. I eventually got caught up via highlights and recaps, to the point where I feel like watching the movie now would just be a redundant bore. This is all to say that I don’t have much loyalty to the original, outside of a begrudging respect for its ability to give me nightmares with something sharp. Once again, this is probably for the best, since without loyalty to the original, I don’t have to worry about betrayal on the part of the same-titled reboot.

July 7, 2025 After three “Jurassic Park” movies and three “Jurassic World” movies, it seems the time has come to kickstart the “Jurassic” franchise again with “Jurassic World: Rebirth.” I’ll give the franchise credit for recognizing that there was no need to continue with the Chris Pratt or Bryce Dallas Howard characters from the last three movies, who were widely seen as uninteresting. Even the more popular “classic” characters played by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum are probably best taking this movie off after fans got sufficiently caught up with them in 2022’s “Jurassic World: Dominion.” Good on this movie for coming up with a new set of heroes. I can’t say I always cared for the story, action, or generally the movie around them, but the movie is better for having them.

June 30, 2025 “F1: The Movie” takes viewers inside the exciting world of Formula One auto-racing. The director is Joseph Kosinski, best known for taking “Top Gun: Maverick” to the top of the yearly box office three years ago. Between that movie’s jets and this movie’s cars, it seems the man’s specialty is directing movies about things that go “whoosh.” And yes, this movie is best enjoyed in premium-format theaters (for me it was a Dolby) that can really give the audience a good taste of the whooshing. That is to say I got maximum enjoyment out of the whooshing cars and very little enjoyment out of everything else.

June 23, 2025 It has been 23 years (not 28, somewhat frustratingly) since British audiences were first introduced to the mind-and-body-ravaging Rage virus in “28 Days Later.” The virus turned everyone it affected into zombies, known as The Infected, obsessed not so much with feeding as with turning more people into zombies. The film’s heroes had a hard time evading The Infected, and then just when it looked like they were safe, they had to deal with the degenerate humans that had appointed themselves to power after the collapse of civilization. The Infected were still at large five years later in “28 Weeks Later” and humanity was more monstrous than ever. Nothing interesting must have happened 28 months later from the events of that film, because the series skipped right over it. Instead, it jumps to 28 years later, when older children and even adults have never known a world not affected by The Infected.

June 16, 2025 After three weeks of domination by the Disney live-action remake “Lilo & Stitch,” it’s time for the top spot at the domestic box office to be taken over by the Dreamworks live-action remake “How to Train Your Dragon.” It feels like it’s too soon to do a remake of a movie from only 15 years ago (Disney has yet to do one from inside of 20 years), but the studio has to promote a new attraction at the Universal Orlando theme park. Movies are always a business, of course, but this one’s existence seemed to be especially motivated by money-grubbing. Fortunately, the quick turnaround means that some of the creative voices of the original, like writer/director Dean DeBlois (also a writer/director of the 2002 “Lilo & Stitch”) are still around to work on this movie, leading to much of the original’s charm being retained.

June 16, 2025 Seeking to broaden perspectives, plumb universal emotions, and explore the world at large, An Appalachian Summer’s Helene and Stephen Weicholz Global Film Series showcases four award-winning and critically acclaimed international films. This year’s set of films hails from Iceland, Lebanon, Thailand, and Sweden. United by the theme of family, the movies take personal yet universal looks at the fragility and tenacity of familial relationships when tested by adversity.

June 9, 2025 Due to a family vacation, it looks like I won’t be able to see/review a new movie this coming weekend. So here are two movies from the past few weeks that I at least mildly recommend… It’s hard to believe that we went over a decade without a new “Final Destination” movie. Fans love this series and its “slasher-movie-without-a-slasher” gimmick. The “killer” here is the concept of Death itself, which takes the form of unlikely, elaborate, horrific accidents. /// Huh, another franchise that took over a decade off, at least with its movies. Jackie Chan is back as Mr. Han, the new head trainer of this series following the passing of Pat Morita’s Mr. Miyagi. Han wants to train his great-nephew Li Fong (Ben Wang) in the martial arts, but the boy’s mother (Ming-Na Wen) forbids it due to a family tragedy.

June 3, 2025 The eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie, “The Final Reckoning,” sees Tom Cruise’s secret agent Ethan Hunt strive to save the world yet again. But this movie has “Final” in its title, so maybe Hunt won’t succeed this time. Maybe the world will be destroyed by the evil A.I. program known as The Entity. Or even worse, maybe Hunt will meet his end and the world will be denied any more of Cruise’s smoldering star power, at least in this franchise. At any rate, Hunt has to defeat not only the all-powerful computer program, but also old human enemy Gabriel (Esai Morales), who is somehow working “for” The Entity. The odds of surviving are really long – and at 170 minutes, so is the movie’s runtime – but Hunt is up to the challenge of saving the world and Cruise is clearly up to the challenge of keeping the audience entertained for that long. I can’t say he succeeds in the latter mission, but he chooses to accept it.

+ More Articles

MOVIE REVIEW: The Drama

MOVIE REVIEW: The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

MOVIE REVIEW: Project Hail Mary

MOVIE REVIEW: Hoppers

MOVIE REVIEW: Scream 7

MOVIE REVIEW: I Can Only Imagine 2

MOVIE REVIEW: “Wuthering Heights”

Movie Review: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

“Five Nights at Freddy’s 2”

Movie Review: “The Smashing Machine”

Movie Review: “One Battle After Another”

Movie Review: “Him”

Movie Review: “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle”

Movie Review: “The Conjuring: Last Rites”

Movie Review: “Weapons”

Movie Review: “The Bad Guys 2”

Movie Review: “The Fantastic Four: First Steps”

Movie Review: “I Know What You Did Last Summer”

Movie Review: “Jurassic Park” Now Playing at Boone Regal

Movie Review: “F1: The Movie” Now Playing at Boone Regal

Movie Review: “28 Days Later” Now Playing at Boone Regal

Movie Review: “How to Train Your Dragon” Now Playing at Boone Regal

App Summer: The Helene and Stephen Weicholz Global Film Series Feature Movies That Shine a Light on the Many Paths to Happiness

Movie Reviews: “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “Karate Kid: Legends” Now Playing at Boone Regal

Movie Review: “Mission: Impossible” Now Playing at Boone Regal