In a post-Endgame era where the movies have diminished in quality with the storytelling, and resort to CGI explosion fests in the third act, Thunderbolts dares to be different and subverts expectations by flipping the script. It puts real effort into its characters and tackles the conflict in the third act from a psychological angle instead of CGI action sequences. It feels like a two-hour therapy session on loneliness, depression, and existential nihilism, in a good way. It’s not your…

There was so much hyperbolic praise around Ne Zha 2 that I figured there was no way it could live up to the hype. But imagine my face, jaw wide open, when it actually did. A completely mysterious animated production from China I had never even heard of suddenly became impossible to ignore due to the word-of-mouth, the box office records, the sheer phenomenon of it all. And now I can confidently say I haven’t seen an animated film this…

I guess I'm disheartened because the MI franchise usually delivers consistent quality with its films. But Final Reckoning is such a jarring step down, and if this is really the last film in the franchise, then I can't say that it went out with a bang. I don't think this movie knew what it wanted to do and then it resorts to leaning hard on nostalgia, reusing old clips, retconning past things like it’s a greatest hits compilation instead of…

This is just a fantastic piece of arthouse cinema that is tightly paced, thematically rich but feels accessible enough for a casual movie lover while still being the type of high art cinema that gets screened at Cannes. It becomes clear as the movie goes on that the whole stomach churning shock premise of a “vegetarian-turned-cannibal” protagonist is actually a metaphor, and this is a coming-of-age movie in disguise as is represented by the college setting. What's even more mind-blowing…