Month: June 2025

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of June 16, 2025

Elio
Rated PG for thematic elements and some action/peril
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%
In Theaters
Disney and Pixar’s latest flick centers on a young boy named Elio whose parents have both recently died (Disney formula hard at work), and now lives with his aunt who works for the U.S. military in the space program. As Elio starts to become an older child, he becomes obsessed with UFOs and wants more than anything to be abducted by intelligent life from space. When his dream comes true, he becomes entangled with an interplanetary conflict when he befriends the son of a galactic dictator. For years Pixar has been synonymous with eye-popping animation and more importantly: fantastically original storytelling. So when a movie falls short, it is really disappointing. This is by no means a bad film, but for Pixar, it is entirely mediocre. As far as its imagination goes, it is fine. The aliens are odd-looking (in a good way) and should be entertaining enough for the younger audiences. Unfortunately, the story is basic and formulaic, which does nothing to impress the adults forced to bring the kids with them. While this is a common thing you see with other studios, when it happens to Pixar you can’t help but wish for more, and wonder why such a project was every green lit in the first place. Quite frankly, I found the movie to be a bit of a bore. I’m not sure if it has the elements to be exciting, as it never really gets going, but I’m guessing that Disney was all in with too much invested, when they should have cut bait in the very early stages. All of this being said, you can’t create gold every time, and a dud here and there is to be expected. If you have little ones, they will most likely be entertained enough, especially if your expectations are in check. But I do not expect a big box office from this one as competing against How to Train Your Dragon and Lilo & Stitch could prove to be an uphill climb that this film can’t overcome. C+

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of June 9, 2025

How to Train Your Dragon
Rated PG for sequences of intense action and peril
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%
In Theaters
In 2010, Dreamworks and filmmaker Dean DeBlois blew us away with the spectacular animated film How to Train Your Dragon, based on the book by Cressida Cowell. Fifteen years later, they are teaming up again to bring the story with a live action version. The movie takes place on the island of Berk, where a community of coastal Vikings are at constant war with dragons, who seem to love to attack their village and steal their livestock. The son of the chieftain, Hiccup (Mason Thames) longs to be a dragon fighter like his father, but he lacks the strength and skills necessary to do the job. But what he lacks in physical presence, he more than makes up for in brains. Designing a tool to snare dragons, he manages to capture a beast that none of his clan has ever seen: the elusive night fury. Unfortunately, he can’t stomach the thought of killing it, so instead he befriends it and comes to the realization that dragons don’t have to be their enemies. This remake, unsurprisingly, is almost identical to the animated version, which completely makes sense since that film was absolutely brilliant. Replacing the stunning animation here is breathtaking CG and cinematography. But most of the elements from the original didn’t need to be tinkered with, and they very adeptly left those things alone. While the opening felt a bit like you were watching a stage production at Universal Studios (the characters are a little silly for live action), once you get to the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless, there is an emotional pull that is hard to describe. Just as it did fifteen years ago, the tears started streaming and I was hooked. Much of the credit for this belongs to composer John Powell who creates a gorgeous variation on a theme with this new but familiar score which lifts the entire film on its wings. Was the film necessary? Probably not. But that doesn’t make it less enjoyable. I’m actually jealous of the folks who didn’t see the original first as I wonder what it would be like to have this as your source material. A-

The Life of Chuck
Rated R for language
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%
In Theaters
Taken from a Stephen King novella, The Life of Chuck takes place in three parts, told in reverse order, about a man named Chuck. From the very start, things are weird and kind of scary as Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a schoolteacher at what appears to be the end of the world. California has fallen into the ocean, the internet is gone, and life is rapidly changing for the worse. And we are slowly introduced to Chuck (Tom Hiddleston). But never fear, the second and third parts make sense of the whole thing, and by the end we get a beautiful tale, full of life, love and dance. It sounds weird, I know, but this is a truly great little film that you will find difficult to describe to others without giving everything away. So don’t. Writer/director Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep) seems to understand really well how to bring King to the big screen, which is no small feat. Sure the whole thing is a bit odd, but some of the best art is. A

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of June 2, 2025

The Phoenician Scheme
Rated PG-13 for smoking throughout, nude images, bloody images, some sexual material, and violent content
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%
In Theaters
In Wes Anderson’s latest creation, Benicio Del Toro plays an industrialist and arms dealer named Zsa-Zsa Korda who is trying to survive a series of assassination attempts and near-death experiences in order to makes his latest ambitious scheme come to life. But in order to bring it to fruition, he recruits his long-lost daughter (Mia Threapleton), who happens to be a nun, as well as the tutor he has hired for his multitudes of sons (Michael Cera) to follow him on a series of missions to persuade several parties to bend to his requests to make the project happen. Amongst all the directors working today, Anderson’s work is definitely the most distinctive. His style is quirky, whimsical, and usually frivolous, which happens to again be the case here. What we get with this story is another situation where the plot is insane, but easy enough to digest because of how it’s pulled off. Anderson does this by once again incorporating an impressive cast of actors, including Tom Hanks, Riz Ahmed, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, and others, who all play over-the-top characters, to distract you from the fact that the story is not very compelling without them, but works because of them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as the film is certainly entertaining and sometimes extremely funny. Since almost all of Wes’s projects are essentially only compared to his other works, this one falls in line easily, but just like most of his movies, it is mostly style and little substance. It’s been years since he has created a feature-length film comparable to the likes of The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel or Rushmore, and it looks like we will have to wait a bit longer for something that stands out in that category. Fortunately, you can tell the creative spark is still there, and one of these days he is going to gives us another masterpiece. But for right now, The Phoenician Scheme can serve as a pleasant enough diversion and next chapter in a long list of quirky and colorful experiences. B

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of May 26, 2025

Fountain of Youth
Rated PG-13
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 38%
Streaming on Apple TV+
Director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Sherlock Holmes) brings us this action thriller starring John Krasinski (The Office) as a treasure hunter/thief who has been hired by a billionaire (Domhall Gleeson) to uncover the whereabouts for the legendary fountain of youth. Recruiting his reluctant sister and museum curator (Natalie Portman), his team travels around the world, searching for clues, but is closely followed by both Interpol and a deadly team of assassins attempting to keep the secrets of the fountain forever hidden. Looking at this film on paper, you would think this could be a huge hit, given the pedigree of filmmakers and stars. But five minutes in and you immediately understand why it went straight to streaming in a time where most of the big releases from Apple are playing in theaters at least a little bit before heading home. From the very start, the project feels like a two-bit Indiana Jones with a peppering of National Treasure. The action is silly and its plans obvious. And as you move forward through the two-hour project, this tromping through the plot becomes more and more tedious. By the end, you don’t just get a poorly created Indiana Jones, but rather a direct rip-off of The Last Crusade, done with the heart, brain and soul completely removed. Apple has been delivering some of the best at-home entertainment out there with the recent releases of The Studio and Your Friends and Neighbors being possibly the two best new television series this year. And in spite of possible good intentions, Fountain of Youth does everything in its power to wreck their credibility when it comes to theatrical-style entertainment. D

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of May 19, 2025

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
Rated PG-13 for bloody images, action, brief language, and sequences of strong violence
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%
In Theaters
Finally, we are getting the finale of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise, which also happens to be the second part of this two-part mission. Continuing the tale from before, Ethan (Cruise) is on the hunt to find and destroy The Entity, an AI system that has gotten out of control and which threatens the entire planet. The key to finding The Entity lies with stopping Gabriel, the one man chosen to be the human intermediary as it tries to take over the world. Traveling from continent to continent, Ethan and his team play a dangerous game of chess with millions of lives at stake. I must hand it to Cruise – while I don’t really care for him or his crazy personal life, he is really good at making movies. And this one is truly epic, especially when you take the two movies as a whole. For the first hour, the film is surprisingly soft, with only a splash of action and a lot of exposition. But at almost three hours long, you can guess correctly that that will change, and it manages to put you on the edge of your seat, chewing your nails down to their nubs, for much of the second and third act. Especially impressive is that Cruise is still doing most of his own stunts, and the stunts look very much out of control and extremely dangerous. But if it were just action, it would suffer under its own weight, so thankfully there is a solid and relevant story behind it all, and while the pieces of the puzzle are technically all big MacGuffins, you are completely invested in their importance and their necessity. If the film has one fault, it’s that it spends way too much time, throughout, making sure the audience understands that this franchise is almost thirty years old, with multiple flashbacks and old characters, or references to old characters, popping in to say hi. I’m guessing that they are assuming that much of the audience might be new to the series and this might help advertise to go back and watch the earlier films. But cutting out ten to fifteen minutes would have served the story better in this particular case. A-

Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton

Week of April 28, 2025

Thunderbolts*
Rated PG-13 for some drug references, language, some suggestive references, strong violence, and thematic elements
Rotten Tomatoes: None at time of writing
In Theaters
In this latest Marvel flick, CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus doing her best Tulsi Gabbard impersonation) attempts to eliminate a group of lone mercenaries who work for her, including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) by having them kill each other while thinking they are on a special mission. But when the survivors realize what is going on, they team up, along with a random guy they found named Bob (Lewis Pullman), as well as Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and Red Guardian (David Harbour), in order to find Valentina and bring her to justice. But what none of them know is that Bob carries a secret that even he is unaware of. One that could wreak destruction on the planet. Marvel appears to be reaching when it comes to their once-dominant place in the box office. First, their whole Kang the Conqueror storyline was brought down by bad movies and a star who they couldn’t work with any longer. Now, with the exception of the Deadpool & Wolverine triumph, we are getting lame heroes and anti-heroes, and mediocre villains in a meta-story that looks largely unfocused. The action is decent, with several exciting fight sequences to propel the story forward, but the way their narrative is resolved could have used a big rewrite. What came across the most was the theme of depression, which made the movie interesting, but also quite a downer. While Red Guardian added a bit of humor, this film needed a huge infusion of laughter, which unfortunately wasn’t present in large enough quantities. I also am not fond of an over-powered, yet boring villain, which is very much what we get here in Sentry. There is absolutely no way these heroes can fight him, so we get a very un-Marvelesque finale. This is probably why Disney is trying to promote it as being like an A24 film, which honestly is one of the strangest movie campaigns I’ve ever seen. Ultimately, just like Captain America: Brave New World, this probably should have been a straight to streaming project, or maybe limited series, as it doesn’t deliver on screen what Marvel has been consistently delivering until this latest phase. C+