Author: Ken Bolding

GAME NIGHT is a completely silly little movie. And I laughed my ass off! The premise is a long-standing game night between competitive friends gets amped up to perilous levels when Max’s (Jason Bateman) better looking, more successful, older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) comes to visit. Jesse Plemons steals every scene he’s in as the weird, divorced, next-door-neighbor cop, who used to get invited to game night because people liked his ex-wife, but has been shunned since the divorce. His creepy deadpan is a work of...

Saw an advance screening of ANNIHILATION. I highly recommend seeing BLACK PANTHER again. ANNIHILATION seems like it would be a gripping novel, but it doesn’t really translate well to the screen. People who didn’t enjoy ARRIVAL (which I loved) found it too languid and cerebral. ANNIHILATION makes ARRIVAL seem like THE BORNE IDENTITY. There’s enough there that I’ll likely read the novel… I just looked up the novel to confirm my recollection that the film is an adaptation. The first paragraph of the Wikipedia plot description is more interesting than the entire film. So I’m putting the “Southern Reach...

Loved it. I saw it for a second time this morning.The production design, in general, is superb. I like that the story is simple and personal while being about the fate of a nation. I like that the fights had structure. It wasn’t just fighting to watch fighting. There were twists and turns and character moments. I liked that they got pretty much almost all of the exposition out of the way in a couple of minutes of prologue, and then just let the world and characters exist. And the world feels true. It feels like these characters live...