Flix At :48

Since movie theaters are closed to everyone, I watched a film through the streaming platform of Netflix called Horse Girl (released earlier this year). Sometimes a film is described as "mainstream" to explain its wide-ranging appeal and entertainment value to the largest audience possible. Horse Girl is not one of those films. So far, Jeff Baena has only directed darkly twisted comedies like The L...

When a group of random strangers wake up outside together scattered across a lightly forested meadow, it's not long before bullets start whizzing and blood starts splattering. Surprising deaths and blunt punchlines fill this dark comedy as unwitting Americans scramble for survival. But the literal hunt of this film is not an ordinary fight with just guns and knives. The gleefully nasty violence is...

Ben Affleck (Gone Girl, 2014) is evidently not afraid to embrace a difficult leading role in this plaintive drama directed by Gavin O'Connor (The Accountant, 2016). Ben Affleck's movie star power was almost lost forever in the mess of the DC Comic films Justice League (2017) and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). But The Way Back has shown us he can still offer good performances. Affleck p...

Universal Studios officially launched a new movie campaign in 2017 called Dark Universe advertising upcoming films retelling classic monster stories through a contemporary lens. This campaign began with The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, and it was one of the worst movies of 2017. The Dark Universe campaign ended as soon as it had begun.

Based on Jack London's novel first published in 1903, this book has been the homework for many junior high and high school English students. The Call of the Wild centers on a mischievous domestic dog who is kidnapped from his home, taken to the outskirts of Canada, and sold as a sled dog to work in the unforgiving winter of the Yukon Territory during the Gold Rush of the 19th century. As various h...

First of all, let me clarify the full title of this film shown on the poster and in the film's credits.

When a place crash kills a young Englishwoman's family, she spirals into depression and prostitution (and not the fancy kind with leather boots and perfume). Actress Blake Lively (A Simple Favor, 2018) shows us she can embrace the "de-glam" of a woman come undone. But the spiral stops when the young woman learns the plane crash was orchestrated by terrorists. Vengeance will be hers!

People might think they've seen this movie before, but the passion and realism in it might make you think again. Just Mercy is based on Bryan Stevenson's 2014 book titled Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption about the author's experience moving to rural Alabama as a Harvard Law graduate in 1989 to offer free legal representation to men wrongfully convicted or unfairly sentenced to death r...

Something about the genre of war films always seems to create a catalyst for exciting and different storytelling, and our latest example of this catalyst is 1917. Two young British soldiers make a dangerous journey into enemy territory during WWI to deliver a message that will stop their fellow fighters from entering an outnumbered battle.

It seems no topic today is more polarizing, and more incendiary, than politics. And Jay Roach (All the Way, 2016) is still building a name for himself as a talented and topical director uniquely adept at telling political stories. But instead of showing us the high-stakes complications of mainstream political lives like he did with Recount (2008) and Game Change (2012), Bombshell tells a story abo...

If you couldn't get enough of the adolescent humor and wild visual effects of the previous Jumanji film from 2017...then have no fear! There's more computer-generated animals, more jokes about private parts, and more casual brushes with death.

Oscar-nominated director Todd Haynes (Carol, 2015) has crafted an intelligent, astute, real-life film about fighting for justice against enormous odds. A corporate lawyer (a reserved Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight, 2015) who defends large industrial companies starts investigating a small lawsuit from rural West Virginia in 1998 centered on dead farm animals and contaminated water. Searching through endle...

Knives Out is a darkly comic murder mystery with a plot that is twisty and witty with a touch of some classic genre motifs. When an imperious wealthy patriarch (Christopher Plummer, All the Money in the World, 2017) dies in his rapaciously decorative mansion, it's not quite ruled out as a suicide. So all the family members are possible suspects...bringing suspicions and judgments into the light.

It's films like this that remind me why going to the movie theater is special and memorable. Based on the 2004 historical fiction novel Caging Skies by Christine Leunens, this film starts out zany and spirited following a 10-year-old boy named Jojo eagerly attending a training camp to join the Nazi army in 1940s Germany. Watching the world through the overzealous eyes of a child gives the film an...

It's an awfully tall order to create a sequel to the iconic horror film, The Shining (1980), but first a little history.

Although this film was first screened in 2017, it has been refined and re-edited since then by its director to create this new director's cut. And it has finally gained wider distribution to now be shown throughout Utah. And in this case, good things come to those who wait. Historical dramas like The Current War: Director's Cut are often revered because they offer immersive portraits of history, a...

I know the official title of this sequel is Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, but I think a more appropriate title could be Maleficent: Everything but the Kitchen Sink. This film has so many sub-plots, so many characters to keep track of, and so many powers to explain within the realm of magical creatures, I was exhausted trying to keep track of everything.

You know you've either seen a great film or a terrible film when you're at a loss for words upon leaving the theater. While not a brilliant entry in the canon of horror comedies, Zombieland: Double Tap is not a tragic piece of garbage either.

What's up, everyone?! My name is Will Smith, and I can still do it all. I can even play two characters at once! That's the main message I came away with after watching this technological action thriller.

Oscar-nominated actor Joaquin Phoenix (The Sisters Brothers, 2018) gives his naturally idiosyncratic edge to the title role in this film offering a psychologically twisted and disarming origin story of Batman's greatest arch enemy. Phoenix plays an ordinary man working as a party clown with an unusual sense of humor and zero friends in a dirty, graffiti-covered, 1970s Gotham city. The continuous v...

It's films like this that make me grateful for unique international voices who offer independent and genuine stories outside U.S. borders. Asian American writer-director Lulu Wang (Posthumous, 2014) entered this film in Sundance where it gained wider distribution and opened in limited release in July this year.

Something about space often entices filmmakers to pair the eternal vastness of the universe with the comparatively tiny insignificance of human life and relationships. Kind of like how my poor insignificant body always seems to be paired with the endless supply of pizza and nachos that are slowly destroying me. Past films that explore this dichotomy of small mankind with infinite space include Int...

I've seen one of my favorite films of the year so far, and I hope more people go to the theater soon to watch this beautifully honest story.

Co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (V/H/S, 2012) have another entry in the canon of the horror/thriller genre that is one half Agatha Christie mystery and one half bloody hunting contest. An innocent bride marries into a super-rich family that have built their multi-generational fortune on board games. But instead of honeymoon bliss, the wedding night is a night of initiation for...

The Kitchen is centered on 3 women who's husbands are in the Irish mafia in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of 1970s New York City. When the husbands are arrested and sent to prison, these 3 women start managing parts of the family business at first to put food on the table for themselves and their children. But it doesn't take long for them to usurp the entire (or mostly entire) male-dominated le...