Movie reviews of Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen

The plot may be thin and the Little Rock subplot is not as engaging as it maybe should be, but Emma Stone, Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, and Zoey Deutch make sure this return to Zombieland is pleasant and amusing.

Tim Miller’s film is an underwhelming, unimaginative, and formulaic but serviceable sequel in a franchise that has been run into the ground and might as well be terminated.

This film rests entirely on Zellweger’s shoulders, but while it is true that her outstanding performance is compelling, she can only do so much to save the film, and, sadly, it wasn’t enough for me.

I think this is a crowd-pleasing and compelling but conventional tribute to an influential artist, actor, and comedian who I knew very little about beforehand. I was grinning from ear to ear throughout this film, and, at one point, it even made me misty-eyed.

Even though the cast is fairly star-studded, Wounds seems to me like a step backward for Anvari. The performers can only do so much when the film around them feels as ineffective, incomplete, and vapid as Wounds does.

Playful but never energetic or entertaining, Steven Soderbergh’s The Laundromat is a tedious and tired drama that almost makes Adam McKay’s The Big Short, of which this film is basically an imitation, look like a masterpiece.

Downbeat but tense, Vince Gilligan’s El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is a satisfying postscript to one of the greatest series ever made.

Although the writing is ridiculous, Ang Lee’s fairly bland Gemini Man isn’t as lifeless as I expected it to be. It certainly has its moments and, for the most part, the digital de-aging gimmick works.

Patrick Wilson is, admittedly, very entertaining to watch chewing the scenery in the middle of the claustrophobic and dizzying grass field, which is shot inventively by Vincenzo Natali and director of photography Craig Wrobleski. But, In the Tall Grass writer-director, Vincenzo Natali has, ultimately, overcomplicated a gruesome short story to such an extent that the film frustrated me greatly.

It is a disturbing and ominous but gripping character study disguised as a comic book film.

Unbelievable is an extraordinary show precisely because it masterfully juxtaposes and juggles their investigation with Marie Adler’s experiences.

This is a film that starts off as a pretty intriguing and thrilling crime film in the vein of David Fincher’s Se7en, but the film is then overwhelmed by its convoluted and ultimately frustratingly predictable story. The science-fiction elements also tend to derail the film. The character work and performances do the film no favors whatsoever either. It may be ambitious, but Jim Mickle’s In the Shadow of the Moon is an extrem...

Ad Astra is a masterful film about going to the edge of the universe to find solutions to our own issues with identity, belonging, and loneliness. This well-crafted science-fiction film reminds us that when we reach for the stars, we mustn’t forget about our humanity.

Warts and all, however, I think Dolor y Gloria is an often moving introspective film.

Her is a memorable and thought-provoking science fiction masterpiece. It is, in my mind, one of the absolute best films of the 2010s.

There is no doubt in my mind that Andy Muschietti’s follow-up to IT, his brilliant coming-of-age horror film, is a meandering and bloated sequel with tonal issues. But I also do think that the film mostly overcomes its many issues to ultimately be a quite moving sequel with great performances and memorable and frightening imagery.

Complete with incredible, state of the art photorealistic animation, Toy Story 4 is a wise and funny sequel which holds a comforting central message and growth for characters that we may not have realized needed some.

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is three different things all at once. This is, obviously, a love letter to late 1960s Hollywood — and, in length, to Tarantino’s childhood — but it is also both a wish-fulfillment alternate reality revenge fantasy for Hollywood of that era — a cinematic opportunity for payback and justice — as well as a genuinely moving and warm hangout movie about male bonding, male...

The Hateful Eight is a three hour, self-indulgent and plodding chamber piece western that has its moments of greatness, but which is also, in my mind, a serious step back for the seasoned writer-director.

An incredibly entertaining and well-made western from top to bottom, even though there are a couple of times when it feels like Tarantino didn’t know when to rein himself and his story in.

It contains all of the elements that people love Tarantino for, such as pop culture references of varying depth, style, extreme violence, tension-filled scenes, memorable characters, clever dialogue, and undeniably and satisfyingly humorous moments in otherwise serious scenes, but it doesn’t have the sometimes impractically nonlinear structure of his earlier work.

Though the first half of the film is obnoxiously self-indulgent, the second half of the film removes the blemishes of the first half and becomes quite satisfying.

Again, this movie has its moments, but the pacing and rhythm of Kill Bill, Vol. 2 is unlike the pacing of the first volume. It is nowhere near as intense or satisfying as the first film.

Though Kill Bill, Vol. 1 isn’t as flawless as I had remembered it being, I still love this cinematic love letter in the form of a martial arts, samurai revenge tale.