Kev's Reviews

Upon a famous writer's death, the sophisticated Detective Benoit Blanc ( Daniel Craig) comes to the deceased man's estate to investigate, interviewing dysfunctional relatives of the departed. With a wecb of red harings to sift through, Blanc begins to uncover the entangled truth. "(It's) an entertainment that's as smart, witty, stylish and exhilarating as any movie lover could wish for, " says Joe Morgenstern , Wall Street Journal Top Critic.  Following the whodunit tradition   set forth by Agatha Cristy, Rian Johnson puts a modern spin on the theme, making a smart, witty, Clue-like mystery. In a Fargo-like montage, there's a great deal of shannagans and antidotes with stabs of funny cynicism. "Rian Johnson kept the mood of the movie rather light and seemingly frivolous, " writes FlixChatter Film Blog's Ruth Maramis . "But don't let that fool you, it's suspenseful when it needs to be and so delightfully entertainin...

Art vs. commerce, guts vs.corporate caution, friendship vs . the world. Based on the incredible true story of legendary car designer Carroll Shelby (Damon) and daring British driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) fight corporate big wigs, the laws of physics and their own demons to reinvent the race car for the Ford Motor Company to be raced in the 1966 24-hour Le Mans of France. I'm not a motorhead, nor am I a fan of car racing, but you don't necessarily have to like the sport to watch this movie. You just have to appreciate good storytelling. Geared to be a top contender in the box office, forecasting to rack up $100 million domestically through the holiday, Ford vs. Ferrari has gotten a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes among both critics and audiences. According to Forbes' Contributing Writer Mark Hughes, "Director James Mangold’s teaming with Oscar winners Matt Damon and Christian Bale is generating plenty of award season buzz, and looks to be a shoo-in fo...

Space exploration has been the theme of many blockbusters.  A Trip to the Moon (1902),   Apollo 13 (1995), Interstellar (2014), and others. It has become a cash cow for Hollywood, boosting box office sales to infinity and beyond! But, all pale in comparison with the latest space odyssey, First Man, which chronicles Neil Armstrong's struggles and successes leading up to his iconic first step on the Moon, July 20, 1969. B ased on James R. Hansen’s biography of Armstrong, the film begins with adult Armstrong test-flying the not-quite-controllable X-15 airplane-makeshift rocket. I'm sure Director Damien Chazelle fought the urge to make this two-hour film into a full-blown biopic - which ended up being for the best. Instead, he created a tense drama with a Montage of glances of Armstrong's youth. Skipping church, they flew planes. Instead of living the stereotypical 1940s American family lifestyle, they lived in the air.  "W e skipped Sunday scho...

Add caption Impossible covert operations - that's what the IMF does. Tom Cruise returns as point man Ethan Hunt in what may be - not only the best of the Mission: Impossible franchise, but the best action movie of all. Good intentions can be a fatal flaw. IMF agent Ethan Hunt is tasked to intercept three stolen plutonium cores but fails to recover them when he is forced to make a split-second decision between retrieving the cores or saving his best friend, Luther. Cruise, 56, holds nothing back jumping from planes, brawling in bathrooms with much larger enemies and engaging in a death-defying chase on a motorcycle in Tom-Cruise fashion. If you think he's grasping at straws trying to extend his Hollywood namesake driven by his ego, think again. Cruise shines brightly, once again transforming into the gritty Ethan Hunt who is doggedly pursuing the criminal group called  o rganization The Syndicate (introduced in Rogue Nation).  As CIA Agen t August Walker joins the I...

It's another warm spring morning in N orth Carthage, Missouri, and it's Nick and Amy Elliott Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. The scene is set for a celebration of a seemingly picture-perfect marriage. Presents, a cake, a handsome husband - but something is terribly wrong: Amy is missing.   Nick runs through the house, crying out for Amy, belligerently. Realizing that the house is empty - save for Bleecker, the pet cat - he dials the police. But, things are not as they appear as in the several upcoming months, police discover evidence implicating Nick. Behind the picture-perfect marital facade hides a series of events filled with lies and deception between the couple slowly, painfully ripping them apart. Nick grows hard feelings towards his estranged wife, but is his mounting frustration enough to make him a killer?  The novel by Gillian Flynn is both gripping and slow-burning as the plot is riddled with peaks and valleys. At times, I couldn't put the book done....

There's no denying Black Panther could not have been released at a better time, during the turbulence rattling our nation,  as the political wall dividing us continues climbing with the president making more enemies than friends, police forces going too far with their authority, and racial profiling sparking outrage. Racking up  over $687 million, the film ranks just above The Dark Knight on the    inflation-adjusted domestic earners list. Still, when you break it down, it's a simple hero-origin story that has been told billions of times.  We start with where Black Panther came from - t he African nation of Wakanda,  T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home in the wake of his father -  King T'Chaka's death. (It wouldn't be a superhero flick if he didn't die, right?) Predictably, T' Challa takes up his rightful role as king.But of course, T'Challa must pass a series of grueling ceremonial tests to prove his strength and ability to lead when he is ...

From the brilliant mind of Lincoln Child comes a suspenseful reinvention of The Wolfman as enigmalogist Jeremy Logan finds a remote community within the fictionalized Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, plagued by recent mysterious,  gruesome deaths.  An investigator of the unexplained, Logan, originally there to work on his monograph, has been drafted into the series of apparent killings by a ranger and old friend,  Randall Jessup, a former Yale classmate who's now a senior officer in New York's Division of Forest Protection.  The bodies have all been turning up in the forest in virtually the same state — shredded, torn limb from limb—and Jessup asks Logan to investigate, knowing that he studies "phenomena beyond the bounds of regular science." The attack may not be the first. Because it happened during a full moon, speculation floats around and Logan catches rumors among the townsfolk about  a family living in isolation called The Blakeneys....