Like the show Friday Night Lights if you removed its soul, 1999's Varsity Blues is filled with all the crude, country-fried stereotypes you might expect. Set in a small, football-fixated town, the film centers on Jonathan "Mox" Moxon (James Van Der Beek), the high school football team's backup quarterback. Although Mox has had a life-long love…Read more Film Review: Varsity Blues (1999)
Film Reviews
Film Review: The Accidental Husband (2008)
In post-9-11 New York, marriage is the air, or so it may seem. The unpredictable nature of love and the fickleness of the human heart will rear their mighty heads. And when they do, they shall tear apart some couples, bring others together and force one woman to make a fateful choice in 2008's forgotten…Read more Film Review: The Accidental Husband (2008)
Film Review: Weapons (2025)
In the dead of night, an entire class of school children save one inexplicably goes missing at the exact same time. The surrounding community is shaken to its core by the disappearance and attempts to make sense of the mystery. Who is behind the abduction, and what do they want? All will be revealed in…Read more Film Review: Weapons (2025)
Two Wildly Different WWII Films
For years now, I have been moving in a different direction on my blog, having resolved to draw down on the amount of film criticism I am pumping out in favor of essays and original prose. I thought that my literal legions of fans would prefer to experience my own unfiltered genius rather than mere…Read more Two Wildly Different WWII Films
Film Review: The Courier (2019)
When one thinks of a bad car crash, they typically imagine it as being a loud, ugly and often bloody affair. Additionally, they think that such an incident would never involve them, that it is something that always happens to “other people.” On both these levels, The Courier – which is being released on BluRay,…Read more Film Review: The Courier (2019)
Film Review: The Irishman (2019)
"Would you like to be a part of this history?" When Jimmy Hoffa poses this question in Martin Scorsese's 24th feature film - the gangland saga The Irishman - the movie is already approximately a third of the way through its epic, three-and-a-half hour runtime. Yet despite its length, tonal restraint and veritable cadre of…Read more Film Review: The Irishman (2019)
Film Review: Hail Satan? (2019)
I recently had the opportunity to review an interesting doc entitled Hail Satan?. While the movie certainly grapples with important and timely themes, it is unfortunately a cursory look at the sick, hypocritical way that the Christian right has become embedded in American political life. Enjoy it all on FilmMonthly! Full Review
A Collection of Recent Reviews
Anyone who knows me well knows that I have largely retired from the film reviewing game. While it once served as my central writing focus, and, in fact, probably turned me into the writer I am today, I no longer find it to be my primary interest. Instead, I now plunk away mostly in the…Read more A Collection of Recent Reviews
Film Review: I, Daniel Blake (2016)
About six or seven years ago, I developed a minor obsession with the work of Ken Loach, the iconoclastic English director of acclaimed films like Kes, Looks and Smiles, Raining Stones, My Name is Joe, Sweet Sixteen and The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Back then, I watched a number of these in quick succession.…Read more Film Review: I, Daniel Blake (2016)
Film Review: Black Death (2010)
From 1347 to 1351, the black death, also known as the bubonic plague and the great mortality, swept across Europe. In four years, it killed between 75-200 million people and altered nearly every aspect of medieval life in the process - from literature and art to economics and religion. The plague is at the heart…Read more Film Review: Black Death (2010)
Adam Mohrbacher 