Movie Review: A Minecraft Movie

November 3, 2025 By Leave a Comment


A Minecraft Movie
Writers: Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James, and Chris Galletta
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers, Sebastian Hansen
Publisher: Warner Bros. Pictures
Genre: Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars (6 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

Four misfits are suddenly pulled through a mysterious portal into a bizarre cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination. To get back home they’ll have to master this world while embarking on a quest with an unexpected expert crafter.

Anything can happen in the overworld.

There were so many Easter eggs here for viewers who have played Minecraft. I’d strongly recommend doing a little research on the game first for viewers who haven’t played it yet due to how funny many of them were, although the plot does still make sense without understanding these references. It’s not always easy to strike a balance between drawing in new fans and entertaining the existing ones. This spoke to both audiences in my opinion, though, and it worked on enough levels to appeal to many different types of viewers.

I would have liked to see more time spent showing just how creative the Minecraft universe can be. This was what first encouraged me to play the game, so I was hoping the film version would explore more of the many unique things that can be done with a crafting table and a vivid imagination. If not for the numerous references to various quirks of the game, I would have struggled to remain interested in certain places due to how easy it was to predict what would happen next.

With that being said, this movie had a fantastic sense of humour that, while written mostly for kids, did have moments teens and adults can appreciate as well. There is definitely something to be said for writing something the entire family can enjoy together. I laughed out loud several times and thought this highlighted the playful aspects of this universe well.

A Minecraft Movie was lighthearted and entertaining.

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Movie Review: Sinners

October 27, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Sinners
Writers: Ryan Coogler
Director: Ryan Coogler
Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Saul Williams, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Andrene Ward-Hammond, and Jack O’Connell
Publisher: Warner Bros. Pictures
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical
Rating: 5 Stars (10 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.

Horror and history are the perfect match.

The character development was everything I hoped it would be. Both the protagonists and the vampiric antagonists were well-rounded individuals who all had their own virtues and vices. They genuinely felt like real people – or real former people – to me who sometimes made terrible mistakes only to reveal wholesome aspects of their personalities that I found relatable and understandable a few scenes later. Sympathizing with vampires or other creatures of the night isn’t something I generally do, but I thought they made some intelligent points about the advantages of joining them and had a much clearer understanding of how the world should work than some of the human characters did.

I loved the way the director wove sharp social commentary about race, colonialism, and how those in power can manipulate things that are supposed to be good for malicious purposes into what was already an exciting vampire movie. This film could be interpreted in multiple ways that each stood on their own merits but also created an even more compelling story if they were layered on top of each other. That isn’t an easy feat to accomplish! It was one of my major reasons for choosing a perfect rating, and I would have given it even more stars if such a thing were possible.

Not every question I had about the characters or plot was answered which I consider to be a huge asset of this story. There were some scenes that were either partially explained or more or less left hanging, especially when it came to the behavior of the vampires in the last twenty minutes. Thinking about possible explanations for their poor choices in those moments made me want to rewatch this to see if there are additional hints about why this happened that I may have missed. I already have a few theories about why it was written that way and thought allowing the audience to come up with our own ideas made those scenes even more powerful.

There wasn’t a single thing I’d change about Sinners. It was memorable and thought provoking from every angle.

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Movie Review: 28 Years Later

October 20, 2025 By Leave a Comment


28 Years Later
Writers: Alex Garland
Director: Danny Boyle
Starring: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jack O’Connell, Alfie Williams, and Ralph Fiennes
Publisher: Columbia Pictures
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars (8 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

A group of survivors of the rage virus live on a small island. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors.

Survival takes on many different meanings after a few decades of zombies running around.

One of the cool things about this film was that it didn’t require any knowledge of the first three instalments in order to understand what was going on during it. Obviously, there were a few interesting callbacks for fans who did start at the beginning, but this otherwise felt like an introduction to a new horror series which I found refreshing and surprising.

The plot twists were pretty easy to spot ahead of time for me given how often I watch zombie films, so I would have liked to see a little more development there given how long this was set after the original outbreak. A new generation of people had been born into and grown up on an island filled with zombies by the time this tale began. Even something as simple as discussing the rules they had grown up following about how to stay safe in such a dangerous environment could have given the storyline creative ways to flourish if a few more scenes had been dedicated to the topic. The possibilities were endless.

With that being said, I enjoyed the plot development that had taken place over twenty-eight years, especially when it came to the tense but sometimes also complex relationships between various characters of both human and zombie origin. This film had some poignant things to say about the meaning of life and how to push through a day, often literally, while dealing with painful emotions like grief or uncertainty. The deeper layers of the storyline were what encouraged me to choose a higher rating and have made me incredibly curious to see what happens in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple once it is also released.

28 Years Later was a grisly but thoughtful adventure.

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Movie Review: Gunyo Cholo: The Dress

October 13, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Gunyo Cholo: The Dress
Writers: Samudra Bhatta, Najir Husen, V. Vansay Zanubon
Director: Samudra Bhatta
Starring: Ip Acharya, Nisha Bajhgain, Prasamsha Bhatta
Publisher: Anupheap Productions, Sabsung Studios, Sky Ocean Entertainment
Genre: LGBTQ, Contemporary
Rating: 5 Stars (10 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

Dev/Gulabi, the only son of a retired Army General, is disowned for wanting to transition. Fleeing her village for Kathmandu, she finds belonging in the trans community and fights for acceptance in a hostile society.

Acceptance is everything.

I was mesmerized by the early experiences in a rural and sometimes intolerant community that shaped Dev (who later changed her name to Gulabi) into the woman she became. Few things in life are completely harmful or helpful, so I appreciated the quiet, happy moments with the family that were included between scenes that showed how her first explorations of her gender identity were misunderstood and feared.

What the love of a family can look like was another theme that was heavily explored in this film. Whether with biological relatives, chosen relatives, or some combination of the two, everyone has occasional disagreements with the people they consider to be kin along with the happy moments they also shared. There were times when I blinked away tears as Gulabi faced disappointment in these relationships and other scenes where I quietly cheered as she found new ways to balance her responsibilities to both herself and to those she deeply loved.

The ending was ultimately what convinced me to choose a perfect rating. It wove all of the themes together perfectly while also resolving the major conflicts in both realistic and heartwarming ways. Obviously, I can’t go into too much detail about what happens in those scenes, but I wouldn’t have changed a single moment in them. They showcased the personalities of all of the characters nicely and gave this viewer a chance to say goodbye and feel satisfied with what I had just seen.

Gunyo Cholo: The Dress was a beautiful and emotional tale.

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Movie Review: 3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost

August 18, 2025 By Leave a Comment


3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost
Directed by: Kevin Fair
Writers: Gregg Rosen, Brian Sawyer, Joie Botkin
Starring: Julie Gonzalo, Chris McNally, Madaleine Arthur
Distributed by: Hallmark Studios
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal
Rating: 4 Stars (8 on IMDB)
Reviewed by Dicentra

The house that Anna, a new real estate agent, has listed has a spirit from the 1920s that won’t go. Even worse, the ghost is afraid she won’t be able to “pass over” unless she reconciles Anna with her ex.

“I’ve taught you the steps, sister. Now it’s up to you to dance them.”

While I’m already a lifelong fan of Hallmark movies, it’s always a treat when the writers come up with a storyline that I haven’t seen before. The romance is surprisingly not the main plot in 3 Bed, 2 Bath, 1 Ghost, which follows Anna Vasquez (Gonzalo), a newly minted realtor fresh off a painful breakup with her ex-fiance Elliot (McNally, who is actually Gonzalo’s partner in real life). When she is handed her first property to sell by her father, she runs into Ruby Barker (Arthur), a now ghost and former 1920s socialite who’s been haunting her family’s property since she died.

While the two women clash initially (see crazy occurrences during a house showing), after a tentative truce they realize they have more in common then not. Both are suffering from a case of lost first love, or the one that got away. As a wealthy socialite in the 1920s, Ruby had previously fallen in love with Charlie but was unable to be with him due to the difference in their station. Anna fell in love with Elliot in college, started a business with him, and struggled to find her passion after they broke up. The sisterhood that Ruby and Anna find in each other was very compelling, and I really loved the dynamic of having 3 lead characters in the movie. I commend McNally for what must have been some difficult scenes of ignoring Arthur’s ‘ghostly’ presence, especially as she strutted around in typical flapper wear (and even dropped a love note in his presence, in the name of playing cupid).

Overall, this was an excellent movie. Hallmark writers at their finest. I recommend it to those who love guaranteed happily ever after romance stories with a bit of historical flair.

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Movie Review: Murderbot

August 11, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Murderbot
From AppleTV+
Writers: Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz
Directors: Paul Weitz, Chris Weitz, Andrew Milano, David S. Goyer, and Keith Levine
Starring: Alexander Skarsgård, Noma Dumezweni, David Dastmalchian, Sabrina Wu, Akshay Khanna, Tamara Podemski, and Tattiawna Jones
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, LGBTQ
Rating: 5 Stars (10 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

A security android struggles with emotions and free will while balancing dangerous missions and desire for isolation, evading detection of its self-hacking as it finds its place.

Safety is no laughing matter…but just about everything else is!

As someone who has yet to read “All Systems Red,” the book by Martha Wells that this series is based upon, I started watching with only the vaguest notion that the plot had something to do with a robot. Immediately, I felt empathy for Security Unit 238776431, or SecUnit as he preferred to be called. This was a show that doesn’t require any previous knowledge of the characters or plot to be funny, relatable, or surprising, although I’d love to hear from viewers who did know what to expect in advance to see what they thought of the small screen adaptation of it.

SecUnit’s understanding of human culture kept me guessing from the first episode of season one to the last one. He was grossed out by simple things like hugging or kissing but generally unmoved by violence unless one of his clients was in immediate danger. These contractions only made him more interesting to me as I never quite knew how he was going to react to any given situation. He didn’t have a human mind, and it showed in all sorts of surprising ways.

I loved the offbeat humor in this series. Not only did it highlight the many differences between humans and sentient robots, it also provided relief from the dramatic scenes. It’s not always easy to balance the two, especially with shows that include as many gun battles and other dangerous moments as this one does, but when it’s done right it’s a great way to draw in a wide variety of audiences and give everyone something to enjoy.

Murderbot made me want to dive even more deeply into this universe.

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Movie Review: Kraven the Hunter

August 4, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Kraven the Hunter
screenplay by Writers: Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway
Director: J.C. Chandor
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger
Publisher: Sony Pictures Releasing
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 3 Stars (6 stars on IMDB)
Review by Dicentra

Kraven’s complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Kravinoff, starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, motivating him to become not only the greatest hunter in the world, but also one of its most feared.

As a fan of the nineties Spiderman cartoons, I’ve always enjoyed Kraven the Hunter’s character. Knowing that he was getting his own live action movie (along with the remote possibility of a Sinister Six movie), I was very excited. However, the movie didn’t quite fully live up to the expectations I had going in.

While Kraven the Hunter appears on occasion as an adversary of Spider Man, I don’t ever recall the cartoons going into depth on how Sergei Kravinoff (Taylor-Johnson) became Kraven the Hunter. I really enjoyed getting to learn about his origins, how he got his powers and how he became the supervillain that we know. Prior to this movie, I didn’t realize that Kraven is actually related to another occasional member of Spiderman’s ‘rogue gallery’ but that does play a part in the story. Additionally, it was a little weird with Aaron Taylor-Johnson having previously played Quicksilver in Avengers: Age of Ultron, especially with some of their similarities in overall appearance, but I was able to suspend disbelief enough to make it work and enjoy the movie. The performance of Aaron Taylor-Johnson was my favorite of the movie, followed closely by that of Alessandro Nivola.

I’m not sure if it was due to writing or some other aspect of the movie, but I feel like some of the other cast members had a lot of wasted potential in this movie. There could have been so much more done with Russel Crowe and Ariana DeBose’s characters, but it just didn’t happen. Calypso (DeBose) in particular is a very dynamic character from the comics, but they might have been limited by the constraints of a movie script length.

While I was overall entertained by the film, I fully understand why Sony and Marvel didn’t want to proceed more in this direction (and that of other solo movies like Morbius). I hope future live action movies can do a better job with bringing the source material to life, and honoring characters from so many viewer’s childhoods.

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Movie Review: Sea Lions of the Galapagos

July 21, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Sea Lions of the Galapagos
Writers: David Fowler, Richard Wollocombe, Hugh Wilson, and Keith Scholey
Director: Keith Scholey and Hugh Wilson
Starring: Brendan Fraser
Publisher: Disneynature, Disney
Genre: Children’s (0 – 6 y.o.), Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 4 Stars (8 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

In the heart of the Pacific Ocean lies a magical cluster of islands, home to a unique collection of castaways. Disneynature’s “Sea Lions of the Galapagos” dives underwater with Leo, a sea lion pup who’s learning how to navigate life.

Everyone deserves to find a place to belong, including sea lions.

I was impressed with how well this documentary balanced the many different audiences it was created for. Fraser explained even potentially scary scenes involving sharks chasing sea lions in such a calm and friendly tone of voice that I’d feel comfortable watching this with the little ones in my life. It isn’t always easy to find family-friendly stories that appeal to kids and adults of all ages and include extra information about the life of a sea lion for those who are old enough to read between the lines in certain shots, so it was wonderful to find something that can work nicely on so many different levels.

There were sections about Leo’s life as a young adult sea lion that I felt were a little slow, especially for any preschoolers or young children who might watch this. While the Galápagos Islands and ocean are beautiful, I would have gone for a full five-star rating if there had been a little more action about halfway through this film. With that being said, so much depends on the attention span of viewers and what they find most interesting in a documentary.

Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that showed a few games sea lions play together underwater. I didn’t know they were so playful with each other or that they used various things that can be found on the ocean floor in similar ways to how humans use toys. This was something I could have spent the full film time exploring!

Sea Lions of the Galapagos was a gentle and wholesome story for all age groups.

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Movie Review: Pets

June 16, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Pets (a Documentary)
Director: Bryce Dallas Howard
Starring: Travis Ford, Adam Burke, and Sterling Davis
Publisher: Disney
Genre: Children’s (0 – 6 y.o.), Middle Grade (8 – 12 y.o.), Young Adult (14 – 18 y.o.), Non-Fiction, Contemporary
Rating: 3 Stars (6 Stars on IMDB)
Reviewed by Astilbe

It explores the extraordinary relationship between animals and their people around the world. Highlighting dogs, cats, pigs, goats, and birds of prey, Pets takes us on a lovely journey that celebrates love, loss, and licks along the way.

Everyone needs unconditional love.

One of the cool things about this film had to do with how many different age groups it was created for. There were interviews with preschoolers, senior citizens, and everyone in-between those age groups, too. This mean that the storytelling worked on multiple levels depending on how closely a viewer could pay attention and how much they already knew about this world. It is not easy to create something that everyone can enjoy, so kudos to the director and crew for pulling it off!

This documentary bounced around quite a bit between various people and their pets. As much as I liked seeing so many different types of animals and people from a wide variety of backgrounds, it was tricky for me as a viewer to feel deeply connected to any of them due to how little screen time they all received. I would have loved to see a smaller number of folks be interviewed so more time could be spent exploring their connections with their furry – or sometimes not so furry – companions.

Every aspect of owning a pet was covered here, from the naughty things they sometimes do to how families help pets who are sick, injured, or elderly. I laughed and cried as I watched this as the people who were being interviewed talked about both the difficult and joyful parts of sharing their lives with one or more animals. Some of my favorite scenes were the ones that explored the quirks certain pets had, from licking doorknobs to getting a little jealous if someone else received more attention than they did. It was a delightful exploration of what life is like when you live with animals.

Pets was heartwarming.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Royal-ish

June 9, 2025 By Leave a Comment


Royal-ish
Writers: Teri Wilson
Director: Roger M. Bobb
Starring: Nichole Sakura, William Moseley
Publisher: Hallmark
Genre: Romantic Comedy, Romance
Rating: 4 Stars (8/10 stars on IMDB)
Review by Dicentra

Lacey is an amusement park princess who befriends 8-year-old Rose, a real-life princess, and is recruited by her handsome father to travel to their kingdom and be the new governess.

Hallmark movies are where happily ever after lovers go for a guaranteed happy ending (usually in the last five minutes), and that’s no different in one of their newest releases, Royal-ish. Theme park princess Lacey (Sakura) spends her days delivering magical tea parties to children in her role as Princess Sweet Pea. When she befriends 8-year-old Princess Rose (and her father and heir to the throne Prince Henry (Moseley) it sets off a romance that screams meet cute and swoon.

While the movie is very much stereotypical Hallmark in plot, it tackles some deeper issues. Lacey found work as a princess while she was working towards a graduate degree, and finds joy in bringing joy to others. She’s worried about aging out of her job (which hadn’t previously registered for me as an issue for theme park workers). The young princess Rose is struggling with the weight of responsibility after the death of her mother and a traumatic incident. And the romantic love interest (Prince Henry) struggles to balance his role as a father and the crown prince of a small kingdom. They did make some slight changes to the stereotypical ‘royal’ plot line for these movies that left me amused. And while the lines were undeniably cheesy, it remained entertaining and engaging.

Overall, this was another entertaining storyline. I didn’t realize this was supposed to be another ‘trilogy’ movie, as they didn’t connect it outright to the other movies (The Royal We and The Reluctant Royal) like they did in their other trilogies (The Wedding Veil Trilogy). I highly recommend this movie to those who like low pressure, guaranteed happily ever after stories. I don’t recommend this movie to those looking for innovative, high-stakes storylines that are harder to predict.

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