Tag: Thomas Haden Church

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) | REVIEW

Daniel Craig and Josh O’Connor in Rian Johnson’s WAKE UP DEAD MAN — PHOTO: NETFLIX (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Rian Johnson — Screenplay by Rian Johnson.

Rian Johnson, the renowned writer-director behind films like Looper and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, has successfully made himself synonymous with the whodunnit mystery genre in recent years with his Knives Out films centered around Benoit Blanc, the heavily accented detective character, which has helped Daniel Craig reinvent his career following his James Bond exit. These are films that have become highly celebrated for their distinctive detective, their star-studded casts, and the way they merge comedy, modern inventiveness, and a genre affinity to form films that are always a highlight of the year in which they are released. This was the case with both Knives Out and Glass Onion, and it is certainly also the case with Wake Up Dead Man, which, arguably, features the best protagonist performance that we’ve seen in any of these films.

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REVIEW: Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

MJ (played by Zendaya) and Peter Parker/Spider-Man (played by Tom Holland) trying to escape the public eye in Spider-Man: No Way Home — Photo: Matt Kennedy / Sony Pictures.

Directed by Jon Watts — Screenplay by Chris McKenna & Erik Sommers.

Next year is the 20th anniversary of the first-ever live-action Spider-Man film, Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, which catapulted an already immensely popular comic book and animation character into big screen superstardom. A lot has happened since then. At this point, three different actors have played Marvel’s beloved wall-crawler on the big screen, and all of them have devoted fanbases. This, Spider-Man: No Way Home, is the third solo film in Tom Holland’s tenure as Peter Parker, but it is so much more than that as trailers have revealed. Rest assured, this is a spoiler-free review that will not reveal anything you wouldn’t already know from promotional material. Promotional material — trailers and posters — have revealed that No Way Home will feature villains (and the actors that originally played those villains) from the previous two Spider-Man sagas and thus connect the different cinematic universes. It is a massive crossover event for Spider-Man fans. My one worry going into the theater was that this movie might be too big to work, but, ultimately, I don’t think that is the case. Because at its heart, this is very much a Spider-Man movie, and I think they manage to balance the various elements of the film remarkably well.

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RETRO REVIEW: Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Release Poster - Columbia Pictures
Release Poster – Columbia Pictures

The following is a spoiler-filled retro review of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 3. It was written in 2016.

I remember liking Spider-Man 3 just fine, when it was released. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, and it definitely wasn’t as good as the first two Raimi Spider-Man films. But it was fine, right? Then, when I rewatched it when it was released on home video, I realized that maybe I had been too easy on the film.

Today, after having rewatched it nine years after its theatrical release, I can safely say that Spider-Man 3 is as bad as people say. But I still like it more than both of Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man films. Let’s talk about the film that made Sony reboot their Spider-Man franchise. Continue reading “RETRO REVIEW: Spider-Man 3 (2007)” →