News & Movie Review

Joe Bell (2021) “Joe Bell” leaves one conflicted. On one hand, it’s well-intentioned in delivering an anti-bullying message that could hopefully help LGBTQ teens and parents relate and educate everyone else. On the other hand, the film is dramatically calculated in ways that shouldn’t be and just undercut the authentic moments that do exist. Director Reinaldo Marcus Green (2018’s “Monsters and Men”) and screenwriters Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry (2005's "Brokeback Mountain") do have the daunting responsibility to tell someone’s true story that’s filled with hope and tragedy without just paying lip service. But despite the affecting work the actors put in, “Joe Bell” frustratingly relies on a gimmick that it never needed in the first place.   Set in 2013, Oregon, the film begins with Joe Bell (Mark Wahlberg), a conservative, working-class family man making his way across America on the open road with his openly gay 15-year-old son, Jadin (Reid Miller). When we first see...

  Blood Red Sky (2021) Netflix’s latest foreign horror entry, “Blood Red Sky,” has a killer logline: terrorists on a plane have their plans foiled by a vampire. Just imagine if John McClane was that vampire. Director Peter Thorwarth (who co-wrote the script with Stefan Holtz) surprises by hiding his hand for a while and then bringing unexpected doses of humanity when an alternate version of this script might have been SyFy-ready schlock called “Bloodsucker on a Plane.” As it stands, this mid-budget action-horror film out of Germany uses its high-concept premise to the fullest and plays it out as seriously as a punctured artery in the neck. It’s fun without being cheesy.   Nadja (Peri Baumeister) and her 10-year-old son Elias (Carl Anton Koch) board a transatlantic flight from Germany to New York. She’s battling some kind of illness, having to wear sunglasses in the well-lit airport, and hoping to find treatment in the states by American doctors. Once the plane is over the Atla...

How It Ends (2021) Zoe Lister-Jones and Daryl Wein (her creative and life partner) write and direct their sixth film together, again under their cutely named Mister Lister Films production company. Not even a pandemic could keep them from making an indie with “How It Ends,” a sunny, flighty existentialist seriocomedy about the day before the apocalypse. It’s not quite as bleak as 2012’s “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World,” which paired Keira Knightley and Steve Carrell mixed with a whole ensemble, but more of a romantic comedy about self-love with the same Armageddon backdrop. Zoe Lister-Jones (2017's "Band Aid" ) stars as a coder named Liza, ready to embark on a solo journey through Los Angeles neighborhoods with her metaphysical younger self, played by Cailee Spaeny (an impressive rising talent who was one of the leads in Lister-Jones’ 2020 reboot-sequel “The Craft: Legacy” ). It’s the last 24 hours of Earth in existence before a meteor blast, and her plan with...

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (2021) 2019’s “Escape Room” proved the January release stigma wrong by being a pleasant surprise and not a nothing burger. It was constructed with more intelligence and showmanship than expected, until nothing could really fix the crummy franchise-starter of an ending except for the arrival of a sequel. 31 months later, that’s exactly what we get with “Escape Room: Tournament of Champions,” which sounds like a “Hunger Games”-like remix on this “Saw”-but-hold-the-torture horror-thriller but more of the same crafty, breathlessly involving ride. Even if you don’t like playing strategy-centric games and solving puzzles yourself, it’s more exciting to watch characters do all the thinking and solving for us at a frantic pace where there’s no time to waste.   Previously on “Escape Room” (in an efficient recap of the first film), Zoey (Taylor Russell) and Ben (Logan Miller) were the sole survivors of a Manhattan escape room designed and controlled by t...

Die in a Gunfight (2021) At its core, “Die in a Gunfight” is a love story. It’s not Shakespeare, but it does evoke “Romeo and Juliet,” with two people who can’t be together because of their longtime family feud. For all of director Collin Schiffli’s confidence behind the camera, there is little to no connection to the central couple. There’s such a focus on being edgy and cavalier that when the film asks the viewer to care about a shallow relationship (and see who actually dies in a gunfight), it starts to feel tonally all over the place. Meretricious and too cute by half, “Die in a Gunfight” is a case of feast and famine, expending so much style and energy on so little. The Montagues and Capulets had it good compared to the Gibbons and the Rathcarts, who have carried on a “blood feud” for generations. The disgraced son, Ben Gibbon (Diego Boneta) could never feel anything until he met and fell in love with Mary Rathcart (Alexandra Daddario), who’s also the black sheep of her family. Bu...

***DISCLAIMER*** The following review is entirely my opinion. If you comment (which I encourage you to do) be respectful. If you don't agree with my opinion (or other commenters), that's fine. To each their own. These reviews are not meant to be statements of facts or endorsements, I am just sharing my opinions and my perspective when watching the film and is not meant to reflect how these films should be viewed. Finally, the reviews are given on a scale of 0-5. 0, of course, being unwatchable. 1, being terrible. 2, being not great. 3, being okay. 4, being great and 5, being epic! And if you enjoy these reviews feel free to share them and follow the blog or follow me on Twitter (@RevRonster) for links to my reviews and the occasional live-Tweet session of the movie I'm watching!  If I said his name five times in a mirror and he brought me gummy worms, I wouldn't think twice about summoning him. Candyman – 4 out of 5 I’ve never actually seen Candyman .   When it came o...

Taylor Swift's Evermore  (2020) was technically released last year. I did overlook it. Just as I overlooked her album Folklore  (2020), which also came out last year. However, the record's success and Swift's talent can't be ignored. Evermore  is Swift's eighth, consecutive album to debut at number-one. She's now only the third woman to have eight, number-one albums behind Madonna and Barbra Streisand. Evermore  also broke the Guinness World Record for shortest gap between number-one records for a female act. It immediately became one of the best-selling albums of 2020, and it even topped the charts three, nonconsecutive times in 2021. It was number-one twice in January and then number-one again in June. Swift also made headlines for yet another number-one album. In April, she released Fearless (Taylor's Version) . It's a re-recording of her album Fearless  (2008). Swift recorded all the songs on her 2008 album all over again in order to create new maste...