Rob Favre

Justice League is not the heavy, turgid mess that its predecessor was. It is also not a good movie. But at least it's a different kind of bad movie. Of course, it has the generic computer graphic villain with a silly name who apparently poses an existential threat to Earth. Or maybe the galaxy? I can't keep track anymore. Justice League certainly didn't do much to make me care about the villain or his plan, which involved taking three cubes and smooshing them together. Hey, T

Jurassic World made eleventy billion* dollars at the box office. It had dinosaurs eating people and a John Williams score. But I walked out of it wishing it had done more. Chris Pratt, who can be terrifically entertaining when he's given material that plays to his strengths, was stuck with a role that asked only that he be a generic action hero. Thor: Ragnarok manages to avoid misusing its Chris in the way that Jurassic World and all the previous Thor movies did. Hemsworth st

If you have read any of my previous reviews, you know I am not a snob when it comes to movies. Especially if they are movies that have monsters and explosions. Give me some exciting set pieces, some fun characters, and I will forgive just about any plot hole you can throw at me. I'm looking at you, The Avengers. I really, really wanted to like The Mummy. I really, really hated The Mummy. It is terrible. Every element is mushy, like vegetables cooked overlong in thick, grayish

I can imagine the artists at computer graphics studios that do work on Hollywood movies get a lot of feedback on their work. "I need that to look more gritty." "Can we tone down the color a little? We need it to look old and dirty." "This is great, I but could we make it about 15% more awesome? Also, I'm going to need the entire thing to happen in slow motion." (That's what I imagine all of Zach Snyder's feedback is like.) And then, one day, a studio gets feedback like this:

There's a moment early in Kong: Skull Island that involves a sandwich. If the moment I'm referring to makes you cackle with delight, you can relax and know that you will be happy with just about everything that follows. (Full disclosure: I know this because I am one of those people.) This is a movie that knows exactly what it wants to be, which is a movie about giant monsters smashing things, with the marine squad from Aliens there to comment on what's happening and, frequent

The night before I want to see Arrival, I had a dream in which I learned that it was actually a sequel to The Departed. In my dream I was disappointed, because now I wouldn't be able to see it until I had watched the Scorsese movie. I'm pretty sure this doesn't actually mean anything; I just though it was funny. After seeing Arrival, I was not disappointed. I will say this flat out: it was fantastic. I won't be able to say much more about it without spoiling things at least a

It's almost without question the biggest game of all time. In, like, a geographical sense. A universe with quintillions of planets, each one full of flora and fauna, caves and cliffs, just begging to be explored. But the only way to see them is to become a grim space Once-ler, mowing down plutonium Truffula trees with your laser to get enough fuel to hop to the next planet. The only way to see more of what you love is to mar and destroy it. And yet... There are some prett

Ghostbusters was funny. Yes, I mean the new one. I enjoyed it quite a bit, laughed a lot, and really liked what each of the four leads did with her part. They had a nice chemistry and played off each other well. Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy were both given a lot of responsibility in terms of plot and exposition, which meant Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon were more free to cut loose, but each of them had their moments. I also have to call out Chris Hemsworth for his sma

This summer, two mighty forces, fighting for the same cause but with radically different outlooks, went head-to-head on the largest stage imaginable. Of course those forces are the movie studios of Marvel and DC, and the cause they are fighting for is separating us from our money. Maneuvering heroes into fighting each other has long been a staple of comic book writers, probably because it is very effective at selling comic books. It's what 10-year-old kids reading comics wan