Movie reviews of Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen

It is tonally agile, wears its inspirations on its sleeves, but feels like a wholly original work, and has one of the craziest climaxes of any film this year in large part due to the film’s confident and genre-bending visual language. Review

It is miscast, poorly written, features a pretty significant screenlife plot hole, has an entirely unconvincing lead performance, features unpolished or downright shoddy visual effects, and is, clearly, designed to be one big ad for the products on screen and, especially, Amazon delivery. Review

It is, undoubtedly, one of the funniest films of the year that, notably, has a relatively brisk pace and really fun end credits bits. Here you have screen legends skillfully delivering joke after joke after joke, and the film doesn’t outstay its welcome. Review

Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns is a confusing hodgepodge of modern updates and fealty to the original films that, strangely, also has borderline character-staining moments, odd visual updates, and a frustrating lack of action. It is an overlong, slightly tedious superhero film that needs an energy boost of action. Review

It succeeds partly thanks to its loving approach to the characters, the era of comic books that spawned them, and its creators, but it is also just an audiovisual feast with great sci-fi exploration, outstanding production design, and instantly iconic music. Review

Although it is built on an intriguing premise and even though it strikes a better tone than the previous film, Sidney J. Furie’s Superman IV: The Quest for Peace fails to tackle its ideas with the kind of weight they merit. Review

It is a boring, uninspired, and unfunny sequel that fumbles almost everything that worked about the previous films, with only Christopher Reeve and Annette O’Toole standing out for positive reasons. Review

There are definite improvements to be found, as well as some really memorable performances. Review

Most of the film is paced extraordinarily well, the film features ‘all-timer’ performances, strong visual effects for its era, and it skillfully laid the foundation for the future of the superhero subgenre films to come. Oh, and it also just leaves you in such a good mood. Review

I Know What You Did Last Summer is an uninspired, unoriginal, and borderline legacy-staining modern follow-up to the Kevin Williamson original. It is tonally uneven, trite, and features hackneyed, lazy, or flippant dialogue. Review

Despite the film being quite busy, Gunn’s sensibilities don’t get in the way of telling a good Superman narrative; rather, they help to amplify the core messages at the heart of the film. Review

Although the film does have strong action, does reach for Spielbergian awe, and does have likable stars, Gareth Edwards’ Jurassic World: Rebirth takes no risks, makes no new moves, and plays it safe. Review

The dinosaur computer-generated images are hit-or-miss, and the action is only rarely particularly interesting. Review

Deep Cover, a laugh-out-loud comedy, is a true streaming film hidden gem, and I highly recommend that you check it out, if you’re looking for a fun and inventive crime-comedy with a strong cast of actors, as well as characters who convincingly, and humorously, think on their feet. Review

I don’t think 28 Years Later is quite as good as the original film, but it has a big beating heart, a head full of ideas, and audiovisual artistry that, in total, makes for a really good time at the movies with plenty to chew on. Review

This is a definite recommendation from me, because of how much the film lights up when Courtney gets to perform. Review

Trachtenberg has, with Predator: Killer of Killers, used the medium to pull off some genuine wish-fulfillment Predator movie moments that are exactly as out there and as gory as you could possibly like. Review

Ballerina is chock-full of action to such an extent that, in the second half, it feels like they’re trying to make up for its deficiencies elsewhere, and, indeed, the good does ultimately outweigh the bad, as the wild action is worth the price of admission on its own. Review

The film opts for something that, though occasionally funny, ends up in a place that makes the entire film somewhat inconsequential. As such, though I liked it in moments, I can’t fully recommend Mountainhead. Review

Fountain of Youth is a sloppily written and derivative action-adventure film with central performances that miss the mark by quite a lot. Review

It’s a somewhat messy but undeniably entertaining entry in the film series that both sets new highs and new lows for the franchise. This, unfortunately, means that even though the film may feature two of the best sequences they’ve ever done, it doesn’t come close to being the best complete film they’ve done. Review

There’s very little of the inventiveness that makes slashers so popular to be found here. Review

It is an effective legacy sequel that emphasizes what works about these films and remembers to be tongue-in-cheek and playful about certain things. It works because this set of filmmakers understood the assignment. Review

Chalamet said he was reaching for greatness, and you can tell. It’s the kind of full-bodied movie star biopic work that you go to the movies for, but he’s also surrounded by excellence as Monica Barbaro, Edward Norton, and Boyd Holbrook are all also so good that you can’t take your eyes off them. Review