Flash Frames

“All $$ ain’t good $$” Director: Spike Lee Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Princess Nokia, and Ice Spice Synopsis: “When a powerful music mogul is targeted by a ransom plot, he is forced to fight for his family and legacy while jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.” __________________________________________________ Spike Lee is undoubtedly one of the biggest living legends in cinema. I don’t think anything is ever gonna take away the impact he’s left. Admittedly, his filmography is a terribly embarrassing blind spot for me, but I’ve seen most of the heavy hitters, barring Malcolm X . Wild that I haven’t gotten to that yet. That’s besides the point, though. The next point is… another movie I haven’t seen, and that’s High and Low , one of the many celebrated movies from the just-as-celebrated Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. I’m not gonna make this a history lesson or anything, but to keep things...

Weapons (2025) Director: Zach Cregger Cast: Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. Synopsis: When all but one child from the same classroom mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.

Eiza González in Ash It’s not too often that I get to see indie horror in the theater, but I’ve tried my best to. By “indie,” I don’t mean a studio like A24 or NEON, even though they technically are indie. I mean Shudder, a studio that deals exclusively in horror and typically puts out their movies and movies they buy the right to into theaters with IFC. The last couple of Shudder films I’ve seen in theaters are In a Violent Nature , which was one of my favorite horror movies of last year, and Skinamarink , a lo-fi experimental horror movie that might just be the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had in a movie theater. That being said, I do have somewhat high expectations whenever I see the Shudder banner. Even if it’s not a great movie, I just wanna see some cool stuff, and boy did I get that with Ash , a cosmic horror/sci-fi exhibition match that pretty much snuck up on me. What Ash is ends up being a fun twist on something we’ve all seen before: Alien as a murder mystery. Riya...

Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Brave New World Since this is the first MCU movie I’m actually talking about and reviewing, I might as well start off with a little preamble on where I think this franchise is heading. Right now, it feels like Marvel is too big to fully collapse like the past DC movies, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn't at least concerned. I understand that their original plan with Jonathan Majors playing Kang as the big villain pretty much fell apart at the seams, so even if it’s cope, I think they’re still trying to figure out what exactly is happening with these movies. To me, the past few MCU movies have been fine. Not disasters or masterpieces, they ended up somewhere in the middle: watchable while they’re on. There are some that have risen above that like Deadpool & Wolverine , the last Doctor Strange movie, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 , and that’s not even mentioning the shows. Loki hit hard for me, but the rest I’ve seen have just been okay. E...

Mark Wahlberg in Flight Risk Guys, what are we doing here? At this point, you probably know who Mel Gibson is. Actor, director, a man of many controversies. That’s not what I’m here for, though. I’m not here for the controversies. What I’m here for is the movies. I’ve seen two of Gibson’s past directorial efforts, and both of them are pretty great. It still makes sense why Braveheart , a rousing historical war epic, won five Oscars including Best Picture and Gibson for his direction. The other Gibson film I’ve seen is his most recent, Hacksaw Ridge . Another war epic that followed a WWII Army medic, it also was embraced by the Academy, earning Gibson another Picture and Director nom, alongside Best Actor for Andrew Garfield’s magnificent performance. I know it seems like I’m just rattling off some facts about Gibson, but it really is worth noting that Gibson just gets it. Saying that I “disagree” with what he thinks is an understatement, but there’s a reason why his comeback with Hacks...

Ralph Fiennes in Conclave This has been on my radar for a few months now. I’ve enjoyed director Edward Berger’s previous effort, his German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front , which was a surprise Oscar contender and won in nearly every technical category, as well as being nominated for Best Picture. That being said, whatever he did next would have some big names attached to it. Conclave has that in spades. After the death of the Pope, Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence has to oversee the election process while reconvening with all of the different contenders at play, all of them wanting to become the new Pope. The process of this election is very in-depth, and for someone who didn’t too much about the subject going into it, it feels like there was a lot of care and effort put into the different strategies that are in place to make the process move smoothly. Berger’s direction is the standout here, his smooth style lending well to a poli...

Vampires have been tough to crack recently for me. I’ve given a go at some of the more popular vampire movies out there, but they just haven’t been my thing. The Twilight movies are in the so-bad-it’s-good camp for me, and I probably should’ve watched Interview With the Vampire before I watched the awful Queen of the Damned , as much as I love Aaliyah. I’ve realized that I’m more into horror-leaning vampire movies as opposed to romance or dramas. I like Nosferatu quite a bit, and I’m especially excited for Robert Eggers’s version coming out this Christmas. I was even into both Renfield and The Last Voyage of the Demeter from last year, the vampire movies that came out last year that no one really saw. So, there are only a few vampire movies I genuinely like, and with Abigail , maybe that trend will continue. In New York City, a little girl named Abigail is abducted by a group of professional kidnappers. Abigail happens to be the daughter of a powerful figure in the crime underworld...

I admittedly do not know much about the Fallout franchise, but the most exposure I have to it is the overall tone of the last few games franchise, along with playing a little bit past the opening of Fallout 4 . However, it’s been pretty clear for the past few years that adaptations of video games into movies or shows are getting a lot better now. Sure, there’s the oddball one that’s pretty bad like the Halo show on Paramount+, but adaptations like Halo used to be the norm. The Last of Us seems to be the biggest example for shows, becoming a flagship HBO Sunday night series, and whether or not you liked it, The Super Mario Bros. Movie was one of the highest-grossing movies of 2023. There also seems to be some common threads that separates a Halo or an Assassin’s Creed from a Last of Us or Mario : involvement of the creators and overall respect of the source material. The writers and showrunners of Halo just tossed away the games and are doing their own thing, and look at what ha...

It’s funny enough to see that two conspiracy thriller/horror movies involving nuns (or nunsploitation, if you want a term) hit theaters only two weeks apart. One is a star-driven project released by an independent studio that ended up being a moderate box office hit, and the other is the prequel to a 1970s horror movie that’s considered by many to be a classic in horror. I’m reviewing the latter, The First Omen , right now, but I do have to at least share my two cents on the former, Immaculate , which ended up starring Sydney Sweeney, along with being a producer on the project. While I do think that Immaculate has its moments, it’s shrunk on me the more I’ve thought about it. Even Sweeney’s pretty great performance and a killer ending haven’t entirely stuck with me in the under-a-month it’s been since I’ve seen it. The First Omen , though, really does feel like a total shock to the system. Think about this phrase on its own: A prequel to a beloved horror movie that probably had too man...