Movie reviews of Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen

I’m not sure if it is too ‘incredible’ to be true. But, as a film, it is too thrilling, captivating, damning, terrifying, and astonishing to miss or dismiss.

Midsommar is a bizarre and surprisingly funny daytime folk horror film about grief and relationship drama complete with ‘shrooms, brightly colored flowers that breathe and sway, and a brilliant leading performance.

Replicas is a trite, overlong, unintentionally funny, and badly designed science-fiction film that includes dated visual effects and horrendous performances.

It’s a fairly good but undeniably underwhelming sequel that, even when I enjoyed it, made me question the lifespan of these films.

Far From Home earns great laughs, features great action as well as a message about deception and gullibility that is perfect for our time and the characters that the film makes use of and, in one case, perfects.

Annabelle Comes Home certainly tests your patience. But I must say that I had a lot of fun with the gimmicky, funhouse concept of the simple but playful and promising Annabelle Comes Home...

While it may not be as ambitious as it could’ve been, Danny Boyle’s simple but irresistible and winning ‘what-if’ film Yesterday will charm your socks off eight days a week.

I doubt that there is anything of value that I’ll remember this Netflix film for, even though it might be the most watchable of Sandler’s made-for-Netflix comedies.

Booksmart deserves to stand the test of time and become a go-to female friendship-film in the vein of Mean Girls and Bridesmaids, and it deserves to become as iconic of a cultural milestone as American Pie or Superbad were to their target audience’s generations. Hopefully, time will be kind to this wonderful coming-of-age comedy.

It isn’t just a history lesson, it is an outstanding must-watch television show.

Though the trilogy-capper is probably the weakest of the three films, I am of the opinion that Dean DeBlois’ How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World stuck the landing as it gave its audience a bittersweet but incredibly moving conclusion to one of the best animated film trilogies ever made.

This sequel is leaps and bounds more ambitious than the wonderful first film. However, I do have some noteworthy problems with the writing and pacing of the film, so I cannot quite say it improves completely on the first film.

It is a heartwarming and charming ‘a boy and his dog’-film that tells a wonderful and truly thrilling story about family and understanding.

I do think many of the jokes in Khan’s film are unfunny, I think the film is built on faulty chemistry, and I think the third act relies almost entirely on contrived drama. Ultimately, however, I am of the opinion that the shot of energy that the stunt casting provides the film with is enough for me to, albeit hesitantly, recommend Always Be My Maybe...

It is a joyless, apathetic, and bland X-Men film. It moves impatiently without actually setting up the events, or explaining them, properly.

Chernobyl is a haunting history lesson. It is a harrowing true story about an event shrouded in controversy and once in secrecy.

Godzilla II: King of the Monsters is a spectacularly big, but really dumb and overlong monster movie so if that is exactly what you want from these types of films, then you’ve got a big kaiju-movie meal to go through.

I thought it was genuinely scary in spurts and gripping from start to finish even if it may be incomprehensible at some points. It may not ultimately be all that satisfying as an unwieldy mystery, the protagonist, who, I contend, the film clearly scolds, may be unpleasant, but I dug what Mitchell was going for with his third film as a director.

While I appreciate what Game of Thrones: The Last Watch represents right now, I do think it is inessential and unfocused even if it is momentarily moving.

Egerton is outstanding in what is probably his finest, most nuanced and most detailed performance to date.

Oddly structured but fast-paced and, at times, gorgeous, Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth is a spectacular blockbuster disaster film that could make Roland Emmerich jealous.

Brandon Akiaten’s God of War: Raising Kratos is a strong ‘making of’-documentary and a solid audiovisual text about the creation of a masterpiece, which, throughout the processes, never really looked like the shining star it would become.

Detective Pikachu is a delightful journey into the world of Pokémon that, in spite of some significant issues, hits most of the right notes thanks to excellent world-building, great visual effects, a super effective approach, and a charming voice-over performance.

Neil Jordan’s Greta is a poorly written and ludicrous thriller, as well as one of the worst movie-going experiences of the decade for me.