Recent reviews

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  Wicked 2024

  Watched 01 Mar 2025

  The unfortunately titled Shiz University in Wicked feels a bit like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. At SU, we see classrooms and magical teachers, bullies, and outcasts. Elphaba Thropp (Cynthia Erivo) shows early signs of being wizardly and gets assigned a room with Glinda (Ariana Grande), a popular, proper-ular, self-centered student who desperately *wants* to be wizardly. The movie’s school-heavy first half feels pretty familiar and Potter-ish, even High School Musical-ish, with tunes that don’t really send the slow start forward.

  The…

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  Challengers 2024

  Watched 27 Feb 2025

  There’s an emptiness to all three young tennis pros (Zendaya, Mike Faist, Josh O’Conner) here. If tennis didn’t exist, they and their Abercrombie bods would dissolve like in that scene in the Avengers movies. Quiet, boring Art Donaldson (Faist) has no personality outside the lines. Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Conner) has charisma, but he appears to be playing a role, most recently the role of cig-smoking-loner-who-sleeps-in-his-car-but-doesn't-really-have-to. Tashi Donaldson (Zenday) suffers a persistent knee injury and her life appears over. The three…

Popular reviews

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  Four Christmases 2008

  Watched 04 Dec 2022 4

  Don’t judge a movie by its HBO Max cover. At first glance and title, Four Christmases looks like a slightly more expensive Hallmark story — how will the couple from the city manage to get through these multiple Christmases, in one DAY, no less?

  And if it’s not Hallmark you see at first scroll, maybe it’s Christmas Vacation. After IMDB’ing the cast and watching a few seconds of the trailer, you might guess that Vince Vaughn is going to fall…

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  Pearl 2022

  Watched 10 Jun 2023

  The colors are so rich and beautiful in the opening half of Pearl that it’s almost as if you’re watching Dorothy arriving in Oz. The title character of the 2022 film (Mia Goth), in fact, looks a lot like the well-known 1939 character from Kansas; Pearl lives on a farm, and even finds a scarecrow. The difference between these two movies, separated by a century, really, is what each character does with the strawman. Dorothy links arms with it; Pearl…

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