Flash Frames

Still from The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim It’s interesting to see how fast this movie came and went. Yeah, an animated fantasy movie aimed at adults isn’t exactly a wide audience in America, but just look at the title of this post. A new Lord of the Rings movie, the first ever since the Hobbit movies, hit theaters last December. Granted, I didn’t see it until now, maybe that proves just how well this ended up going. I’ve never been too into Lord of the Rings and all that, but I’ve enjoyed what I remember of those movies. I guess this is a reminder that I have to watch those again at some point. Either way, this isn’t just an animated movie: it’s anime, honest-to-god anime. When The War of the Rohirrim was first announced, I thought it would be anime-inspired, like elements of the Spider-Verse movies. I really didn’t think it’d just be anime, but once I saw that Kenji Kamiyama, the director of this, created the Ghost in the Shell series, Stand Alone Complex , that’...

Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Wicked Alright, here we are. We’re basically at the finish line, but I’ve now seen every single nominee for Best Picture at the Oscars this year (I’m ranking all 10 of them tomorrow before the ceremony starts). The last of them, as you can see, is Wicked . The beloved musical took a very long time to hit the silver screen, with an official announcement of a movie coming all the way back in 2012. Admittedly, I wanted to watch this much sooner, but I was in the middle of my final semester in college. Them’s the breaks, but I got it at home and was able to get through the just-under three hour runtime at my own leisure. At this point, I’d usually go into what Wicked is, but come on, I don’t think I really have to. It’s Wicked . That being said, I should mention that this is the first part of a two-parter, with the second act, titled For Good, set to release this Thanksgiving. I mention that because I think this was a game-changing decision that really b...

Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here I’m almost done with getting through the Best Picture nominees this year, and there’s gonna be a post about ranking all ten of those movies very soon. I do have to give some background with this, though, mainly because it did have to do with my experience while watching I’m Still Here , the latest film from legendary Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. My first exposure to the movie was lead actress Fernanda Torres’s surprise win in Best Actress in a Drama at the Golden Globes over big names like Nicole Kidman and Pamela Anderson. I can’t have been the only one to decide to go “okay, I’ll watch this now” once it would hit a theater that was closer to me. Admittedly, I was still worried that this wouldn’t get to theaters. Sony Pictures Classic unfortunately don’t release their movies in my area theatrically too often, but I’m glad they aren’t dropping the ball with I’m Still Here . I went into this completely blind, other than Fernanda Torres leading the...

Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson in Nickel Boys It’s not too often that I have to sit on a movie for this long. I needed to start off with that because I saw Nickel Boys a few weeks back. I want to see all of the Best Picture nominees at the Oscars this year, and this was one of them. Based on Colson Whitehead’s novel, it tells the story of two Black kids who live in an abusive reform school during the peak of segregation in the 1960s. The story is also heavily inspired by the true story of Dozier School for Boys, which was an infamous reform school in Florida that abused their students. I wanted to highlight that because I learned what inspired this story just as I was researching for this review, and it really brings a heavier weight to an already heavy movie. That’s another reason why it took me some time to reflect on Nickel Boys : Not just based on the subject matter, Nickel Boys is a movie that instantly enters the canon of instant classics. Watching this reminded me of seeing ...

Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown Musician biopics are something that I’m very partial to, especially when an actor just sinks into a role. However, the worst of the worst can be painful to sit through. The worst ones just seem tone deaf more than anything, and the best paint an image of who the subject is, with the good, bad, and ugly parts. While it definitely does lean in the more “wow, what a guy he is” angle, Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is one of my favorite movies of the decade so far. It captured the energy that Elvis had at his heights, but the only real critique I have is that Priscilla Presley was just left by the wayside for most of that movie. It felt poetic that a movie surrounding her life, directed by Sofia Coppola, released just a few months later and feels monumental. Coppola’s Elvis is kept at a distance because you know how Elvis was. A Complete Unknown , James Mangold’s second go-around at a music biopic after 2005’s Oscar-winning Walk the Line (and a great title ch...

Still from Flow I bet a lot of people that were watching the Golden Globes didn’t expect Inside Out 2 or The Wild Robot , the expected winner of not just the Globe for Best Animated Feature but the Oscar too, to lose out on that award. However, it did to this movie, Flow . An independent movie from Latvia, which is also a nominee in this year’s Best International Feature category at the Oscars, beating out not only a strong Pixar movie but the Dreamworks underdog is a big deal. Flow not only has the quality to back it up, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it took home that animated feature Oscar. It’s also a very simple premise: a cat that’s been run out of its home by a massive flood finds shelter with different animals and has to adapt and survive in this new world. I didn’t really know what to expect, but the ties to more fantastical elements would be something to at least watch out for. It doesn’t exactly tie into the plot, but I can’t lie and say that I was expecting it. The a...

Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin in Sing Sing At the time of this writing, the Oscar nominations are coming tomorrow morning, and I’m still in that catch-up period of the supposed nominees that will show up there. Out of all of my blindspots, Wicked is definitely the biggest, but I still have to see a couple of them. Sing Sing , out of what I could find, just wasn’t released at all in my area this past July. I saw the trailer for it when I watched I Saw the TV Glow , and it looked phenomenal. If you haven’t seen it or haven’t even heard of it since A24 has been doing an awful job at marketing it, this is based on the true story of the Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison. Divine G, played here by Colman Domingo, is incarcerated for a crime he didn’t commit and finds his purpose through RTA with his fellow inmates by creating their own productions. Outside of Domingo and Paul Raci, most of the cast is made up of real-life alumni of RTA who were ...

Adrien Brody and Guy Pearce in The Brutalist Author’s Note: An article was recently published about The Brutalist and how it utilizes generative AI for certain elements in this film. I’ve linked the original article here , but I don’t mention it in the review because a majority of the below was written before this article went viral. Man, this one has a lot of hype around it. One of the year’s big awards frontrunners, co-writer/director Brady Corbet has The Brutalist up to bat, which releases wide in the U.S. and the U.K. on January 24, which has seemingly come out of nowhere. Corbet has come out of nowhere in the awards scene, really shocked that he came back bounding from Vox Lux , an ambitious, campy movie in its own right. A24, who’s distributing the film, pulled a little marketing stunt with the Golden Globes, waiting to see if The Brutalist would pick up any awards. Not only did it, but it ended up winning three of the biggest awards of the night: Best Picture – Drama, directo...

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Russell Crowe in Kraven the Hunter I’m not even sure what to say. Sony’s little venture into Spider-Man spin-off movies that don’t actually have Spider-Man in them was admittedly interesting to watch unfold, in a morbid sort of way. I remember being pretty excited for the first couple of Venom movies, which I think are fun in their own right. Turning Venom and Eddie’s relationship into a rom-com is an inspired call, but I can’t even begin to say that about the other films in this “franchise.” Morbius and Madame Web were both famously clowned on by the internet, but even though the latest Venom movie really wasn’t, I think that was the worst of all of these spin-offs so far. Now, we have the unfortunate end to this little world. Sony said just a few days before Kraven the Hunter released that the solo Spider-Man villain movies aren’t returning any time soon, so we’re getting to see a cinematic universe implode in the span of two hours. For the sake of savin...

Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice Noticing trends in Hollywood has always been fascinating to me. It’s not too often that such a big machine like Hollywood avoids a movie’s existence, and in this case, I don’t even blame the big studios for avoiding The Apprentice . If you don’t know, this movie is about Donald Trump and how he was mentored by his lawyer, Roy Cohn, and molded into how he’s viewed in the year of our lord 2025. If any of you heard about this movie, it’s how Trump had described it as a hack job that was made intentionally to derail his 2024 re-election campaign. Even one of the producers of the film, Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder, threatened to sue because he was under the assumption that The Apprentice would be painting Trump in a more positive light. All of that basically scared off any major studio from picking it up for release, and coincidentally released in theaters just a few weeks before the presidential election. The Apprentice came an...

Still from Transformers One It’s nuts to see that there’s actually a pretty well-received Transformers movie out there now. I know I’m very late to the party with this one, but I just kept hearing about Transformers One and how good it is, from non-fans and fans alike. I know I should take out that bias when I’m reviewing something, but it was so overwhelming that it felt unescapable. One is apparently a prequel to Michael Bay’s live-action Transformers films, but there’s no real connection to them. I honestly don’t even know why this is tied to it. One follows two lonely workers: Orion Pax and D-16. They work in the mines on Cybertron, where the intelligent robots are divided into two classes: the ones who can transform and the ones who can’t. Why they mine for Energon, the fuel that powers Cybertron, is because the planet lost the Matrix of Leadership. Gaining this back could end the need for what’s basically slave labor and restore Cybertron to its former glory. It’s refreshing t...

Brandy Norwood in The Front Room Is there such a thing for nepotism going to your siblings? The Eggers Brothers, Sam and Max, have their debut feature project on their hands. If you recognize that last name, you’ve definitely seen it. Their brother, Robert Eggers, is a much more well-known filmmaker, who recently directed Nosferatu . Sam even co-wrote my personal favorite Eggers film, The Lighthouse . The duo of Sam and Max got a theatrical release for their debut project this past fall from A24, where Robert got his start with The Witch and The Lighthouse . The Front Room is no The Witch . Just getting right to the point with this one, this was just bad. This follows an expecting mother, played by Brandy in her first horror movie role since I Still Know What You Did Last Summer in 1998, who takes in her ill mother-in-law after the death of her husband’s father. There’s really only one criticism I have with The Front Room , but it’s one that cuts deep: I’m not entirely sure if this ...

Naomi Scott in Smile 2 It’s not too often that we get a major glow-up for a practically immediate horror sequel, maybe outside of the Saw movies. The original Smile , which was released back in 2022, was a massive surprise for me. It looked like a really corny Truth or Dare -adjacent cheap jumpscare horror, a comparison that became even more apparent when it was supposed to be a Paramount+ original that got sent to theaters due to positive test screenings. However, it was a genuinely bleak, atmospheric, and straight up terrifying look into how traumatic events can twist and bend a person so out of shape that they may never return to who they were before. It was a pretty impressive outing for a streaming movie, especially as a debut feature from writer/director Parker Finn. That being said, it’s certainly one of those movies where you stare at the blank screen for a good 20 minutes, just processing what you have just seen. Sosie Bacon made for a great lead in that movie, but we’ve got ...

Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie in Blink Twice We’ve been in an interesting era for pop culture and how we deal with consequences for our actions, and I’m surprised that there really hasn’t been a horror movie that doesn’t directly attack the mentions of “cancel culture” and things like that. Well, at least ones that don’t come off as preachy. Blink Twice really doesn’t come off as preachy in most parts, but it’s practically tackling “cancel culture” head on. Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a cocktail waitress at tech billionaire Slater King’s annual gala. He invites Frida and her friend, Jess, to his private island with his buddies for a dream vacation, where something sinister begins to creep in. It’s not exactly subtle with what it’s trying to say, but maybe it’s best to use a hammer rather than a pair of scissors for this topic. Blink Twice is very much a thriller in the vein of Get Out or even Don’t Worry, Darling (a movie I like quite a bit), with the first half being a very accompli...

Well, here we are. 2024 is a couple of days behind us now, and with the 94 new releases I saw this year at the time of publishing, they ranged from future classics to piles of crap to hidden gems, and everything in between. I can’t talk about every single movie I saw, and since this post isn’t ranked, you can follow this link to my Letterboxd list to see how all of these movies stack up. First, some honorable mentions… Honorable Mentions : The Bikeriders [dir. Jeff Nichols] Conclave [dir. Edward Berger] Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga [dir. George Miller] Longlegs [dir. Osgood Perkins] The Peasants [dir. Hugh & DK Welchman] The People’s Joker [dir. Vera Drew] Rebel Ridge [dir. Jeremy Saulnier] Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band [dir. Thom Zimny] Road House [dir. Doug Liman] Terrifier 3 [dir. Damien Leone] The 20 Best Movies of 2024 (in alphabetical order) AGGRO DR1FT [dir. Harmony Korine] This is probably the most singular theatrical experience I’ve had this ...

Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu & Jamie Lee Curtis in Borderlands We have to get the worst out of the way to get to the good stuff, so let’s just cut to the chase. 2024 was a fascinating year for movies, maybe I’d call it good? However, the bad movies from this year are so bad that it could just cancel the “okay” movies out. Hell, even some of the more iconic bad movies from this year like Madame Web just aren't in my bottom 10 of the year because there somehow happened to be movies that I thought were worse. I haven’t seen every movie this year, so this is just my list, not the objective overall list. However, I am including only honorable mention, or a dishonorable mention, on this list because it absolutely would’ve made this list, but I have a good reason why it’s not there. Dishonorable Mention : Megalopolis [dir. Francis Ford Coppola]. I thought that this was just absolutely excruciating to watch in a theater, but the only reason why it i...

J.K. Simmons and Dwayne Johnson in Red One Cutting right to the chase on this one, especially since it’s after Christmas: Red One is garish. I can’t even say it’s the worst thing in the world, mainly because it’s at least got some ambition to it. Santa Claus is reimagined as a bodybuilding, cookie-eating machine and is played by J.K. Simmons. There’s also little hints to other mythological beings that are probably being set up to show up in a hypothetical sequel, but who knows if that’s going to happen. St. Nick is protected by MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), which is basically the S.H.I.E.L.D. equivalent to this world, alongside his personal security team led by The Rock (I can’t remember his character’s name, but I’m not bothered to look it up, so like his contracts for every movie, The Rock wins). Santa’s kidnapped, so The Rock has to team up with hacker Chris Evans (also can’t remember his name) to save Christmas from being annihilated by a Christmas witch...

Lily Rose-Depp in Nosferatu Mentioning how excited I ended up being for Nosferatu in my review of Tarot might have put a curse onto me. Robert Eggers’s career has felt like it’s built up to this. The writer and director of The Witch , The Lighthouse , and The Northman have all been massive hits with me. The Lighthouse is arguably one of my favorite horror movies ever, and The Northman proved that he could tell stories on a massive scale, on top of delivering on some damn good Viking action bits. Even The Witch , a movie that’s grown off of me over the years, deserves credit for launching the career of Anya Taylor-Joy, who’s slowly becoming one of my favorite actors. A Eggers-helmed remake of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror , F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece, has been in the works since before The Witch was even released. To me, it feels like a match made in heaven. Eggers’ washed out, bleak look to his movies feels like perfect material for a vampire flick. As much as I was hyped...

Avantika in Tarot We’re at the point in the year that I like to call “The Catch-Up,” at least for movies. Not everyone can watch every new release in a year, myself included. So, looking around streaming services and even looking at places like the local library are usually on schedule. For the end of December and most of January, The Catch-Up is in effect, and Tarot , which can be boiled down to a sauceless Final Destination , is the first of them. This is nearly every classic horror trope in one movie: a group of friends spend some time in the woods and do tarot readings together, and they break the rules of the readings, releasing curses that will kill each person based on the reading they received. The idea of cursed tarot cards certainly has potential, but to put it bluntly, the movie is just so bland. Believe it or not, there are some positives here. The monster designs are surprisingly inventive, and both Jacob Batalon and Avantika try their best to save a lifeless script. Both ...

Still from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 It’s been fascinating to see these movies become underdog stories. It’s been over five years now since that truly awful trailer of the first Sonic the Hedgehog movie released, with that nightmarish original design for Sonic embedded itself into our minds. Now, two movies and a spin-off streaming series later, it’s hard to believe that one design change brought the franchise up to this. Sonic the Hedgehog and its 2022 sequel are pure family fun. Some groan-worthy bits thrown in occasionally, but that’s to be expected. They’re largely movies for kids and families, that’s gonna come with it, but with this new installment, a good amount of that “family movie” façade is mostly (intentionally) stripped back. In the third installment, Team Sonic has a new enemy to face: a mysterious experiment called Shadow, who’s broken out of military unit G.U.N's containment to enact his revenge on G.U.N. from a tragedy 50 years earlier. Obviously I’m leaving out major...