Director Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, Mud) is an expert at creating ordinary characters, putting them in everyday situations, and allowing interactions and relationships to carry the story. He has masterfully accomplished this through films I adore, such as Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and Mud, and through films, such as Midnight Special and Loving, that aren’t quite as good as a whole but still have well-crafted characters. The Bikeriders, his most recent film, follows a similar blueprint but fails to tell an exciting story or have a single character we genuinely care about. While well made with a stellar cast that put forward the effort, the film was a snoozefest.
Twisters (2024)
The best thing that I can say about Lee Isaac Chung’s (Minari, Munyurangabo)Twisters is that it does very well at what it tries to do. In his first film since earning an Academy Award nomination for 2020’s Minari, Chung takes on a film that couldn’t feel any more different. Twisters is not a sequel or reboot to the commercially successful Twister, which earned $495 million worldwide, or more than five times its budget of $92 million. The 1996 movie was one of the most-hyped and anticipated movies in years, with its trailers ahead of their time and two of the newest Hollywood A-listers in Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton. Despite its commercial success, it had poor Rotten Tomatoes critics (66%) and audience (58%) scores.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Many deem Christopher Nolan’s (Interstellar, Oppenheimer) The Dark Knight the best comic book movie ever. Those and others consider Nolan’s three Batman films the quintessential superhero trilogy. The Dark Knight is the franchise’s standout, successfully eclipsing the superhero genre and delivering an eerie tale of good versus evil that requires many chief characters to make layered, moral decisions at a moment’s notice. In particular, The Joker (Heath Ledger – Brokeback Mountain, Monster’s Ball), the film’s villain, continually requires its protagonists to choose between what is best for them and society’s greater good. Fans of superhero movies and those who traditionally have little to no interest in that genre can equally appreciate The Dark Knight.
A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)
Disappointing. That’s the word I would use to sum up A Quiet Place: Day One, the prequel to A Quiet Place and the third movie in the successful trilogy. John Krasinski wrote and directed both A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place Part II. Krasinski only has producer credits for the final installment. We felt his absence. A Quiet Place: Day One lacked originality, coherence, and suspense. It was a cash grab, which I played into. Michael Sarnoski (fresh of writing and directing credits of his debut film, Pig).
61* (2001)
HBO (now Max) has been producing its own feature-length films since 1982, averaging 10-15 releases each year. Most of these films have little to no marketing behind them, nor are they distributed by a major studio or star A-list actors. With very few exceptions, these films go mostly unseen. However, there have been exceptions. These include The Normal Heart, Bad Education, Live from Baghdad, and Behind The Candelabra. Perhaps HBO’s most celebrated and widely received original movie is the Billy Crystal-directed (Forget Paris, Mr. Saturday Night) 61*, chronicling the 1961 single-season home run chase between New York Yankees teammates Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.