A Killer Romance: Movie Review

An unusual tone with a trashy story creates a somewhat compelling movie.

A Killer Romance is an insane movie and walks this weird line between exactly what you’re expecting and not at all what you’re expecting. It’s filled with a dozen movie tropes seen in a hundred films, but combines them in weird ways with conflicting tones to create a movie that feels original even though it really isn’t. Which I suspect was the filmmaker’s aim and they succeeded.		2023 Directed by: Tony Glazer Screenplay by: Tony Glazer Starring: John Clarence Stewart, Marija Juliette Abney, and Christian Campbell

Where the Tracks End: Movie Review

Chooses melodrama instead of optimism.

Where the Tracks End follows Ikal (Kaarlo Isaacs) a ten-year-old boy who has some social skills but zero academic skills. His father works for a railroad company building train tracks, and the family has newly arrived in a small, dirt town. Ikal makes friends, adopts a stray dog, and finds a teacher who wants to help him learn how to read. Ikal is easy to like; the movie is not.		2023 Directed by: Ernesto Contreras Screenplay by: Javier Penalosa Starring: Kaarlo Isaacs, Frida Cruz, and Adriana Barraza

BlackBerry: Movie Review

2023 is apparently the year of the corporate biopic, a genre that is proving to be more successful than it sounds like it should be. Blackberry, the historical drama-comedy about the rise and fall of the Waterloo tech company Research in Motion, is highly entertaining with a winning structure. Mike and Doug are two Canadian tech nerds with an idea for the world’s first smartphone and zero sense of how anything is accomplished or how money is made.		2023 Directed by: Matt Johnson Screenplay by: Matt Johnson, Jacquie McNish, Matthew Miller Starring: Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton

Royalteen: Princess Margrethe: Movie Review

The first Royalteen was able to shed the image of a silly royal rom-com with a more serious tale of a girl who made past mistakes and had to balance a new love with her new reality, both of which clashed with who she used to be. That happened with Princess Margrethe on the sidelines; a minor character who tried to bully Lena into repeating her past mistakes while insisting she was a picture perfect princess doing everything for her family. Now she has her own movie.		2023 Directed by: Ingvild Søderlind Screenplay by: Randi Fuglehaug, Anne Gunn Halvorsen, and Marta Huglen Revheim Starring: Elli Rhiannon Müller Osborne

Invitation to a Murder: Movie Review

Invitation to a Murder starts with a vague and mostly unoriginal – but still promising – premise, and then doesn’t do much with it. 1930s England, six strangers have been brought together by a mysterious benefactor to spend a weekend at a remote mansion. It’s a common enough start for murder mysteries because there are lot of different angles one can take. Too much time building up the premise, not enough time making it entertaining for the audience.		2023 Directed by: Stephen Shimek Screenplay by: Gerard Miller, Brian O'Donnell and Jerome Reygner-Kalfon Starring: Mischa Barton, Chris Browning