Author: Jill Florio
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Movie Review – The Commuter
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It’s strange: I did really enjoy this movie while watching it, and felt entertained immediately afterwards. But by the time I got home, the good stuff was already fading, and I was left with a lot of improbable plotting and endless images of Liam Neeson walking up and down train cars, having uninteresting and random…
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Movie Rewatch – Jurassic Park
It’s been a long time since the first Jurassic Park graced our theaters, but it’s still the best. The CGI effects have vastly improved since 1993, but the story is what matters most — and the original still brings back the happy tears and goosebumps I felt back then, seeing beloved dinosaurs come to life.…
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Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
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It’s harder to love this movie than any of the *Harry Potter* films. The setting is rather gray and dreary, and the costumes are mundane, even for the time period. Main characters Newt and Tina are both underplayed, and hard to get a feel for. Their sidekicks, Jacob and Queenie, are much more appealing. There…
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Movie Review – I, Tonya
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This movie surprised me: I teared up and cried a little for Tonya Harding. She’s been known as an Olympic villain for so long…and here we see that she may have been unfairly painted by history. If this story is an accurate representation, then I feel bad for believing the worst of this girl. I…
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Movie Review – Star Wars – A New Hope
*A New Hope* runs very closely to the number one spot that *Empire Strikes Back* occupies in the SW oeuvre — clipping its heels, as it were. It started the whole mythology and adventure in a well told opening story. It’s almost perfect. But the “official” name, *A New Hope,* is just lame. This movie…
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Movie Rewatch Review — Titanic
Is there any movie more touching and exciting than Titanic? And the first time you watch it, it’s completely unexpected. I didn’t even want to see this in the theater, and resisted for months. Fool that I am, I figured, “Yeah, it sinks. I know what happens. Why see it? I was never so glad…
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Movie Review – The Terminator
The Terminator is one of the truly perfect films in the science fiction genre. Sure, there are temporal paradox/causality loop issues, but you have to handwave that and go along with the premise. And why not? If you’re going to tell a time travel story about what happens when the singularity occurs — and it…
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Movie Review – Downsizing
I’m a little annoyed at Downsizing. The trailers presented this as a lightweight, fluffy comedy about being resized to five inches tall (in order to use less planetary resources). Great! Except this isn’t actually a comedy, and you barely get the sense of being shrunk. After the first half hour, it may as well be…
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Movie Review – Jumanji 2: Welcome to the Jungle
This sequel version of Jumanji is adorable and funny. Predictable, yes, but the story is based on a video game plot, so it’s kind of a baked-in thing. It’s also bit too pat in how each teenage character gets the perfect game avatar to grow as a person, but this is yet another thing that…
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Movie Review – The Last Jedi
It’s too soon to know how I feel about this latest installment to the Star Wars saga. A lot happens, at a brisk pace. We have fleeting introductions to a bunch of brand-new characters we never get to know; why they rounded up well-known actors for little more than extended cameos is beyond me. It’s…