#REVIEW: “AMERICAN UNDERDOG”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
American Underdog tells the true story of football quarterback Kurt Warner (Zachary Levi). It focuses on his constant setbacks before reaching NFL fame with the Rams. We are taken to his college football days, his stint with the Green Bay Packers and his impactful time with the Arena Football League’s Iowa Barnstormers. These moments come and go, but the constant and center of his life is his wife Brenda (Anna Paquin) and her children who become ...
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#REVIEW: “THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH”
Review by George Kozera for Mr. Will Wong
With four Oscars on his mantlepiece, I was dying to see how Joel Coen would cinematically interpret Shakespeare without his brother Ethan by his side. Whereas I can see why Coen was drawn to adapt this classic tale with its intricate weaving of violence, double-crossings, revenge and power, movie versions of many of the Bard’s works are notoriously a hard sell to get butts in the theatres. THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH is a formidable accomplishment and is ...
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#REVIEW: “LICORICE PIZZA”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest follows the lives of 25-year-old Alana Kane (Alana Haim) and 15-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman). After meeting during Gary’s high school picture day, where Alana was working for the photographer, the two form a strong bond. Anderson follows their vulnerable relationship as they navigate life, love and adulthood in the beautiful, fun and cruel '70s San Fernando Valley.
Licorice Pizza is a knockout. ...
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#REVIEW: “SING 2”
By Mr. Will Wong
Following the smash success of 2016's SING, comes Sequel SING 2 - right in time for the Holidays! Writer/Director Garth Jennings returns once again here as do several of the star-studded voices who graced the first film. Fans of SING will find many of the same things to love about this follow-up.
At the heart of the story is Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) who owns the Moon Theatre and wants to propel his venue and star gang of performers to the next level, trying to ...
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#REVIEW: “SWAN SONG”
Review by David Baldwin for Mr. Will Wong
Cameron Turner (two-time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali) is dying. He has a terminal illness and is prone to seizures that he has been hiding from his family. Dr. Jo Scott (Glenn Close) and her team have the experimental procedure that might make things easier: cloning him, and letting the clone take his place as part of the family without them noticing.
The moral quandary and ethics around whether Cameron should go through with this plan or not ...
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#REVIEW: “THE KING’S MAN”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
As the war continues in the early 1900s, Pacifist Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) tries to keep his determined son Conrad (Harris Dickinson) from joining. Unknown to Conrad, Oxford is working with a secret club. This club has knowledge about a group of criminal masterminds who plan to destroy humanity. Oxford brings Conrad into his club and the group sets out to stop the tyrants.
Writer-Director Matthew Vaughn has made a prequel that does justice to ...
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#REVIEW: “RED ROCKET”
By Mr. Will Wong
Sean Baker who brought us mesmerizing The Florida Project back in 2017, is back with the even better Red Rocket. While Texas City is filled with small ambitions, this is some grand storytelling, carried by a larger-than-life performance by Simon Rex.
The story centers on a homeless Mikey (Rex) who returns to town, battered and bruised, hoping his estranged wife Lexi (Bree Elrod) will take him back in to live at her mother's house. It doesn't take long for us to understand the ...
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#REVIEW: “NIGHTMARE ALLEY”
Review by George Kozera for Mr. Will Wong
Four years after winning an Oscar for the Toronto-helmed “The Shape of Water”, Auteur Guillermo del Toro is back on the big screen with NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Long since a dream project of his, del Toro pays homage to the classic Hollywood Film Noir genre from the '40s and '50s where the men were hardboiled and weary (think Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon” or William Holden in “Sunset Boulevard") and the dames were shrewd and manipulative ...
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#REVIEW: “SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME”
Review by David Baldwin for Mr. Will Wong
Opening exactly where we left off, Spider-Man’s (Tom Holland) identity as Peter Parker has been revealed to the world. With his future irrevocably destroyed and his closest family and friends caught in the fallout, Peter seeks out the help of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch). Strange offers to perform a spell that will have everyone forgetting who the web slinger is, but Peter messes it up – and now familiar villains from other universes have ...
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#REVIEW: “THE TENDER BAR”
Review by Amanda Gilmore for Mr. Will Wong
Adapted from J.R. Maguire’s Memoir, The Tender Bar takes a look at a son searching for a father figure. In 1972, J.R (played by Daniel Ranieri as a child and Tye Sheridan as a young adult) and his mother Dorothy (Lily Rabe) move into her father’s house in Long Island. The nine-year-old spends his days searching the radio for the voice of his absent father, who's a DJ. His uncle Charlie (Ben Affleck) takes him under his wing: introduces him to the ...
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