Movie Reviews

By Bob Garver   “Don’t Worry Darling” is a film whose poor reputation precedes it. It’s going to be remembered not for anything that happens in the film, but for being the source of news stories about animosity between various players in its production. But I can look beyond all the gossip and behind-the-scenes drama…

By Bob Garver Last week I wrote that critics were a little too eager to embrace the random-twist horror movie “Barbarian” because the release calendar was in a slump and there hadn’t been a good movie in a while. If those critics had just waited a week, they could have embraced “The Woman King,” an…

By Bob Garver With “Barbarian,” writer/director Zach Cregger of “The Whitest Kids U Know” becomes the latest performer primarily known for comedy to take a stab at the horror genre. The gold standard is of course Jordan Peele, whose “Get Out” in 2017 was an out-of-nowhere success both at the box office and awards podiums.…

By Bob Garver Last year, a longstanding tradition was bucked when the MCU’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” opened to an impressive $75 million at the domestic box office over Labor Day weekend. For some reason, maybe having to do with the kids being back in school, Labor Day weekend is typically…

By Bob Garver NOTE: This movie is available in both an English-dubbed version and a Japanese version with English subtitles. This review is based on The English-dubbed version.   Here we are with another anime movie based on a property that is entirely unfamiliar to me. Actually, that’s not true – I’ve at least heard…

By Bob Garver I had to take a week off from the column three weeks ago when “Nope” opened at #1 at the domestic box office. While I’m not sorry that I gave all my attention to a wedding that weekend (shoutout to my Uncle John and new aunt Amy!), it is a shame that…

By Bob Garver   I love movies like “Bullet Train.” Get a bunch of thieves, assassins, and criminal types in compact space and watch them careen and bounce off each other like bumper cars for two hours. It helps that I also like trains. Taking a train out of Penn Station in New York City…

By Bob Garver On more than one level, “DC League of Super-Pets” falls right between “The Secret Life of Pets” and “The Lego Movie.” Like “The Secret Life of Pets,” the movie is an animated comedy that follows domesticated animals whose voices can’t be understood by humans as they learn to make friends for themselves…

By Bob Garver   “Where the Crawdads Sing” is being pushed as one of those literary adaptations that kicks off a whole litany of adaptations. We had magic and fantasy with “Harry Potter,” supernatural romances with “Twilight,” dystopian ordeals with “The Hunger Games,” and that weird trend of relationships complicated by increasingly rare diseases with…

By Bob Garver Thor (Chris Hemsworth) hasn’t been seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame,” where he decapitated Thanos, got really fat, and ultimately left to go have space adventures with the Guardians of the Galaxy. I remembered the first two parts just fine, but I had to be reminded of the third prior to…