Tag Archives: Mark McPherson

There was a strange sensation as I exited the theater. It was that rare feeling when you don’t feel as though you’ve left the theater, but left a world. Blade Runner 2049 is not just a return to the familiar and atmospheric world of a dark and gritty future, but a deeper dive into another world within another world. As …

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While the first Kingsman film seemed to maintain a certain sense of dignity amid its fantastical action and frantic characters, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is 100% silliness to the point of being a cartoon. But there’s something I found rather admirable about a film that is willing to go for it, daring to present the most ridiculous style of a …

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The opening scene of American Assassin is one too familiar in action-thrillers. The hunky Mitch (Dylan O’Brien) has just proposed to his girlfriend at the beach while filming it for all the world to see. She says yes, a surrounding crowd claps and he goes to the outdoor bar to grab her a drink. You don’t have to be a …

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It occurred to me while watching The Trip to Spain that Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are the most natural of funny British actors. Even though they’re essentially playing semi-fictional depictions of themselves in the Trip movie series, there’s a grace to their comedic banter and frustrating plights that rings too true. The filmmakers could tell me this was a …

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The story is familiar, but the world is rarely seen in movies and entirely in Yiddish. Menashe (Menashe Lustig) is a portly Hasidic Jew that has recently lost his wife. His ten-year-old son Rieven is taken out of his custody as the Orthodox Jewish community believes he is not fit to care for him without a wife in the apartment …

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Dolls have always been pitched as staples of movie horror, but I don’t see the fright in such figures. They’re small, light and fragile enough that you can punch, kick, toss or chuck them a few yards with ease. This is why 2014’s Annabelle was such a lackluster movie by focusing so heavily on a rigid doll that all a …

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Detroit is the type of film that makes you feel uncomfortable in more ways than one. Yes, it is disheartening and tragic to watch the violence break out in the streets of Detroit during the riots of the 1960s, fueled by fear and racism. It’s also shocking to watch police officers brutally beat and shoot black suspects in cold blood. …

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Atomic Blonde begins with setting the stage of 1989 Berlin during the fall of the Berlin Wall, only to spray-paint an X through this passage to proclaim that this isn’t that story. It is and it isn’t, however, in a picture that never really settles into its chaotic and neon groove of an alternative and bombastic spy film. Sometimes it’s …

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You can tell that Luc Besson wrote and directed this sci-fi adventure with the way he places his efforts more on developing a fantastic galaxy of starships and aliens than most of the characters that occupy the universe of Valerian. While he does make the smart call of overloading the screen with as many visually stunning and original ideas as possible, …

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Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk makes a strong case for him being the thinking man’s Michael Bay. Last month, I had to endure Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight where the volume was cranked so loud that I was wondering what would break first: the speakers or my eardrums. I now endured Nolan’s World War II epic that turns the volume up just …

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