"A" Movie Reviews

Rebecca Deniston
Aug 07, 2023
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The best of the best.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Rebecca Deniston
·
May 28, 2022
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

I’ve grown up on Top Gun. My dad is a single engine pilot and all my life I’ve been around planes and been told about planes. It’s our thing. On Thursday, we, along with my son, went to see Top Gun: Maverick, which is long overdue and totally worth the wait. Since the movie is still pretty fresh I’ll try my hardest not to give spoilers, but a fe…

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Father Of the Bride (2022)

Rebecca Deniston
·
June 18, 2022
Father Of the Bride (2022)

Who hasn’t seen the Father of the Bride movies? Spencer Tracy and Steve Martin both played loving, nervous Stanley Banks, who has to come to terms with his daughter’s impending marriage while shelling out mondo amounts of cash to pay for the wedding. That’s the story in a nutshell, and if anyone is coming into this not having seen…

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Elvis (2022)

Rebecca Deniston
·
June 22, 2022
Elvis (2022)

Elvis has not left the building. Baz Luhrmann’s new film is a whirling, vigorous rise and plunge that’s held together by its two leads, the uncannily dead-on Austin Butler as Elvis and an almost unrecognizable Tom Hanks as Colonel Tom Parker. It’s hard to be completely spoiler-free here, so be warned.

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Hans Christian Andersen (1952)

Rebecca Deniston
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June 29, 2022
Hans Christian Andersen (1952)

Like David O. Selznik after Gone With the Wind, producer Samuel Goldwyn tried his hardest to recapture the success of his most acclaimed film, 1946’s The Best Years Of Our Lives, and he never quite got there, much as he would have liked to. However, his 1952 movie,

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The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969)

Rebecca Deniston
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July 20, 2022
The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969)

Who else likes finding new-to-them stories about World War Two? I love it. I just saw The Secret of Santa Vittoria, which I knew nothing about before and which turned out to be a nice surprise. The film is set in 1945 right after Benito Mussolini is killed, and Italo Bombolini (Anthony Quinn), once the biggest Mussolini fan of all, has gone up the water …

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Delicieux (2021)

Rebecca Deniston
·
August 6, 2022
Delicieux (2021)

Cooking is a sensory experience, and I don’t mean that in a Like Water For Chocolate kind of way. We all well know this. The smells, the textures, the sounds, and the weight of food when it’s cooking and plated are all are part of the eating process because it signals to the body that sustenance is coming. The mouth waters and the body prepares to diges…

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Only Yesterday (1991)

Rebecca Deniston
·
August 20, 2022
Only Yesterday (1991)

Confession time: I have never seen a Studio Ghibli film, although I’ve heard about them for years, and it seemed high time to change all that with Only Yesterday. Wow. This film is over thirty years old, but it’s seen a resurgence in popularity due to a new English translation made

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The Aeronauts (2019)

Rebecca Deniston
·
August 24, 2022
The Aeronauts (2019)

Who else is intrigued by early aviation, whether it’s balloons or planes? We think we know so much about it now, but naturally there was a time when we knew next to nothing practical, so going up took some serious cajones, and it wasn’t all a man’s game, either.

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All Quiet On the Western Front (2022)

Rebecca Deniston
·
November 2, 2022
All Quiet On the Western Front (2022)

Netflix's new German-language version of All Quiet On the Western Front walks a fine line between adapting Erich Maria Remarque’s classic 1929 novel and coherently presenting a time period that’s been out of living memory for a decade. Wow. This movie is

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Black Narcissus (1947)

Rebecca Deniston
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December 3, 2022
Black Narcissus (1947)

Attempting to succeed where others have failed is a durable story device, and 1947’s Black Narcissus brilliantly goes to extremes in its portrayal of a group of nuns who get more than they bargain for. The story takes place in the Himalayas, where Sister Clodagh runs a mission and a school with a small group of nuns, all housed in a f…

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Jesus Revolution (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
March 1, 2023
Jesus Revolution (2023)

Chuck Smith’s church is dying. Everyone’s bored. He’s bored. His congregation is bored. On the other hand, they feel somehow in the right because they’re not bowing to the hippie culture. Chuck’s daughter, Janette, issues a challenge to her dad: “Have you ever talked to a hippie?”

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Lured (1947)

Rebecca Deniston
·
March 4, 2023
Lured (1947)

We all know Lucille Ball as a brilliant comedienne and one of the minds behind I Love Lucy, but what isn’t as readily known about her is that she dabbled in film noir during the nineteen-forties. One of these is 1947’s Lured, a cautionary tale about opportunity and deception.

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Kimi (2022)

Rebecca Deniston
·
March 18, 2023
Kimi (2022)

I feel like I’m coming in late on Kimi because of its very time-bound nature, but then again, the lockdowns were three years ago this month and they already seem surreal and distant, so the movie has a strange nostalgia to it. Like in the beginning when a guy is on a Zoom call with his top half in a suit and his bottom half in pajamas. At lea…

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His Only Son (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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April 5, 2023
His Only Son (2023)

Christian movies seem to be the cinematic dark horses of 2023. Jesus Revolution overperformed at the box office, grossing over fifty-one million, and now we have His Only Son, which surprised everyone by opening at number three its first weekend and it looks to keep going strong.

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Nope (2022)

Rebecca Deniston
·
April 19, 2023
Nope (2022)

Nope is another movie I’ve been putting off viewing for various reasons and just now got to see. Was it worth the wait? Boy howdy, yes. And yikes, but not in a bad way. Right off the bat, Nope lets the viewer know that it is in no way typical, starting with a murderous chimp that has apparently killed the entire cast of a TV show,

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Air (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
May 13, 2023
Air (2023)

In telling the story of one of the greatest endorsement deals, if not the greatest endorsement deal of all time, Air has certainly set a high bar for itself. It’s pretty fitting, because once upon a time Nike was no stranger to courting gutsy athletes, starting with gone-much-too-soon track star Steve Prefontaine, who served as the company’s first marke…

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Asteroid City (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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July 1, 2023
Asteroid City (2023)

Wes Anderson is a formula unto himself, with his highly stylized color saturation, tableaux vivants, rat-a-tat pacing, and deadpan delivery. There are characters stepping into frame, talking straight at each other and stepping out of frame. Many of the characters are outcasts because they’re highly gifted, at least one character writes pl…

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Um, Journos? Calling "Sound of Freedom" A QAnon Movie Is A Lazy, Hateful Cop-Out.

Rebecca Deniston
·
July 12, 2023
Um, Journos? Calling "Sound of Freedom" A QAnon Movie Is A Lazy, Hateful Cop-Out.

We all know there’s been a lot of buzz about Sound of Freedom in the mainstream media lately, and most of it is infuriating. It’s no secret that many people of a certain persuasion pretend to be tolerant while also framing dissenting voices as “disinformation” and calling for

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Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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July 19, 2023
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One (2023)

Oh, yeah, it is ON, people. The release of this latest Mission: Impossible movie was delayed because of COVID, but the wait has been completely worth it. Like the vast majority of films we’ve seen from the busy Mr. Cruise, Dead Reckoning grabs the viewer and holds on tight.

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Oppenheimer (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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July 26, 2023
Oppenheimer (2023)

The atomic bomb is a tricky topic for a lot of reasons, but Hollywood and others who shall remain nameless have the tendency to paint the United States as the sole bad guy when that’s just not the case. Oppenheimer doesn’t fall into step with this philosophy; it’s one of the few recent movies, possibly the only one that I’ve seen that gets wha…

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The Hiding Place (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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August 5, 2023
The Hiding Place (2023)

In 1971 Corrie ten Boom’s memoir, The Hiding Place was published, and four years later, World Wide Pictures and the Billy Graham Association released a film based on the book, with Jeannette Clift playing Corrie, Julie Harris playing Corrie’s sister, Betsie, and Arthur O’Connell playing Casper, Corrie and Betsie’s father.

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Jules (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
August 19, 2023
Jules (2023)

Milton Robinson lives a very average life in Boonton, Pennsylvania. His life is so average, in fact, that when he gets up at town meeting during the open discussion segments, he makes the same requests every time, often word for word. Change the town slogan. Put in a crosswalk at a certain lengthy intersection. Milton’s fellow seniors, Sandy a…

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Golda (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
August 30, 2023
Golda (2023)

Golda Meir was a towering personage. I grew up hearing about her from my mom, who has always told me how brilliant and stalwart Meir was. In terms of historical stakes Meir is kind of a meeting point of such figures as Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher in that she was fighting for the survival of Israel while also doing what no woman…

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A Haunting In Venice (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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September 20, 2023
A Haunting In Venice (2023)

As those who have read this Substack page over the past year know, I generally avoid reviewing anything from Disney or any of their holdings for various reasons. However, I do make exceptions now and then. When the topic is Hercule Poirot, exceptions are a must. Well, they’re also a must when the movie is free, but that’s a topic for another da…

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A Million Miles Away (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
September 27, 2023
A Million Miles Away (2023)

We all know that streaming content can miss the mark, usually because it tries too hard to emulate a certain genre and comes out looking like a Lifetime or Asylum movie. In the case of A Million Miles Away, which is based on the true story of Jose Hernandez’s

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The Creator (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
October 4, 2023
The Creator (2023)

There’s been plenty of anticipation for The Creator, Gareth Edwards’ first directorial credit in seven years. The publicity surrounding it looks vaguely Star Wars-y, of course, and seeing as Edwards is best known for directing Rogue One, this is no small obstacle. However, he exceeds expectations, albeit with a few missteps.

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A Very Good Girl (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
October 11, 2023
A Very Good Girl (2023)

A Very Good Girl is a Filipino dark comedy starring Kathryn Bernado as Mercy and Dolly de Leon as Mother Molly. When Mercy is fired for no reason by her boss, the ruthless Mother Molly Suzara, she plots to ruin Molly’s life and take everything from her. It’s

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Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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October 21, 2023
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)

Shut everything down, because Killers of the Flower Moon deserves all the Oscars. And Golden Globes. And BAFTAs. All the awards. This movie is extremely long, exhausting, and can be hard to watch, but its most common descriptor is “important” with excellent reason.

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Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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December 6, 2023
Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Last month I noted in my review of Invasion of the Astro-Monster that Godzilla did a jig in what should have been a “Curse you, Red Baron”-type of moment. Godzilla Minus One is not that kind of movie. Oh, no. It’s about getting back to basics but doing it in a really fresh way.

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Ferrari (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
·
December 27, 2023
Ferrari (2023)

Biopics are a minefield as we’re all well-aware. Some try to tell too much and end up skimming the surface. Others try to get too artsy and end up losing their subject. The best ones pick a story to tell and stick to it, and that’s what Ferrari does.

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"My Fair Lady" Turns 60

Rebecca Deniston
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Feb 7
"My Fair Lady" Turns 60

My Fair Lady is sixty years old and hasn’t aged a day. Beautiful anywhere, it especially shines on the big screen, where all the meticulous details can be seen down to the tiniest stitch. If anyone hasn’t seen it, the film is an adaptation of the 1956 Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe stage musical, which was an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s

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The Zone of Interest (2023)

Rebecca Deniston
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Feb 10
The Zone of Interest (2023)

Commandant Rudolf Hoess lives what seems to be a very normal life with his wife and children. They’ve got a fine house and plenty of help, they enjoy days at the river, they eat well, they dress well. Everything looks bucolic and idyllic until the camera pulls back and we see that the Hoess abode is right next to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau …

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Dune: Part Two (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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Mar 6
Dune: Part Two (2024)

We’re back on Arrakis for the long-anticipated Dune: Part Two. Everyone breathe. :-) And don’t worry, I’ll try not to give too many spoilers. It’s going to be tough, though, because there’s so much to take in (Anyone who’s interested in reading my review of Part One can find it

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"Labyrinth" Turns 38

Rebecca Deniston
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Mar 9
"Labyrinth" Turns 38

“Be careful what you wish for.” That seems to be the main message of the 1986 Jim Henson-George Lucas film, Labyrinth, a crazy, madcap tale of an imaginative teenage girl named Sarah. The movie is on the big screen in some places, and if anyone has the chance to take in a screening, I very much recommend it, albeit with a few reservations.

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Cabrini (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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Mar 13
Cabrini (2024)

I saw Cabrini on Saturday with a group that included my mom, my oldest niece, and Robynn, my friend of thirty-five years, and I figured I’d just go see it and not write anything about it. Bloggers and writers, especially those of us who write reviews, know very well that feeling of “If I don’t write about it, it didn’t happen,” an idea that…

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One Life (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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Mar 20
One Life (2024)

Nicholas Winton is a stockbroker who’s on his way to Prague around the time that Hitler annexed the Sudetenlands in 1938. He’s appalled when he sees all the refugees, many of them Jewish, living on the streets, waiting in limbo for something to happen, and unless that something involves leaving Czechoslovakia, the road ahead looks bleak, espec…

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Late Night With the Devil (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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Apr 6
Late Night With the Devil (2024)

Talk show host Jack Delroy has tried to do everything right in the world of showbiz. He’s risen through the ranks of stardom. He’s a member of a secret gentleman’s club in California called The Grove, which, yes, is based on The Bohemian Grove. While the press (and America’s women) love him, Jack’s show,

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The Fall Guy (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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May 8
The Fall Guy (2024)

It’s probably been said in Hollywood that actors take the bows while the stuntpeople take the “ow’s,” or if it hasn’t been said maybe it should be. Ryan Gosling as Colt Seavers does both in The Fall Guy, which is not only a love song to the stunt profession, but straight-up old school fun.

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"The Muppet Movie" Turns 45

Rebecca Deniston
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Jun 1
"The Muppet Movie" Turns 45

My son and I are going to see The Muppet Movie on Monday night. Yeah, I know it’s kind of weird and unusual to review a movie before watching it, but even though I’ve never seen it on the big screen, I still know The Muppet Movie way better than my son. Not that I’m bragging or anything, of course, but I turned three when it came out and it was the movi…

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Young Woman And the Sea (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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Jun 5
Young Woman And the Sea (2024)

Trudy Ederle was never supposed to survive measles, yet she did. She was never supposed to be a swimmer because the measles damaged her hearing and water would damage it even further, yet she became a champion swimmer, holding all major world records for women. She was never supposed to swim the English Channel, let alone make it across, yet she s…

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A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

Rebecca Deniston
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Jun 29
A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

I like the Quiet Place movies. A story built around blind alien invaders who are super-tuned into sound is a very interesting idea, and it’s hard not to get caught up in it. I’ll admit, though, that I keep hoping the story will move forward sometimes. We’ve seen how the aliens land. We know that they’re attracted to sound. When do we get …

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