Movie reviews of Don Shanahan

If you can reach this plane of empathetic understanding through the abnormal twists and turns of The Life of Chuck, you have found yourself one marvelous movie. Review

From these urges, Nora takes us into the protagonist’s psyche to a totally different realm of her personality. Nora breaks up its narrative with various song interludes, each pouring forth a different emoted feeling from her hopeful and ever-churning imagination. Review

With little consistent conviction of characters, tired tantrums, and very obvious twists, dumb brawn is taking away from brains at too many junctures. Review

Come to think of it, the challenge of The Kiss comes full circle back to pity; only this time it’s the pity held by the watchful film audience. Review

Just when you think this franchise couldn’t get any bigger with its ambition, just when you think more series-wide connections from its legacy couldn’t be squeezed into this culmination, and just when you think Tom Cruise can’t top himself in the daredevil department, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning answers. Review

With a marinade of humor and a dash of spiritual Catholic contrition, Chbosky and Maccie find the meaningful meat behind the fluff for a welcome crowd pleaser. Come hungry and leave full, with Billy Joel appropriately sending you out. Review

There’s a compelling playfulness in The Trouble with Jessica where viewers’ rooting interests are worked like a seesaw. Review

Even if there are fleeting bits of decent togetherness from the losers, Thunderbolts* is a meta image reclamation project going for no more than light applause, and it shows. Review

The Legend of Ochi is odd and uncool, maybe, but it’s forthright, meaningful, and prudently PG-rated with intentions, lessons, metaphors, and magic all its own. Review

While Daisy Edgar-Jones commands the leading role of the film and learns the most about herself through this year-long chapter of life, her romances are diluted somewhat by the plainness of marital domesticity. Review

As miraculously messy as it describes itself at one point, bringing those feelings and themes forward was very much worth the effort. Review

Death is Business continues to highlight Chicago-based filmmaker Matthew Weinstein’s deft skill of atmosphere and slow-boil revelations. Review

Ryan Coogler gives everything an important story, and, in the end, that concentration matters most. Steeped in all of these mythos and even more unmentioned sublayers of symbolism and imagery curated by a fleet of hired cultural consultants and their seals of approval, Sinners becomes grander and more profound than simply a sandbox genre experiment... Review

Unfortunately, the other by-product of Darkest Miriam’s low-key course is a muddle of bewildering minimalism. Review

The two men of Sacramento are going through this very emotional gauntlet right before our eyes for 90-odd minutes, leading to an ultra-relatable profundity that will garner support and appreciation. Review

If the human precision isn’t impressive enough in Warfare, the production value work and rigorous filmmaking effort will galvanize and hammer that point home. Review

Thanks to the exuberant cast and the kind of contagious entertainment they dispensed, you may just come to love something you didn’t know a lick about 101 minutes earlier. Review

We’re watching a wringer that doesn’t wring us out in return because we come to understand and care so deeply for this broken woman at odds. Review

Compared to other medical-centered dramas that amp up their own kinds of manufactured peril, Audrey’s Children will not—nor should it really—be the most scintillating film of life-saving excitement. Review

We fail to see or feel the heavier point The Assessment wanted to confront us with. We’re too busy tidying up another bleak and futile mess. Review

As frightful and grisly as Majors and Magazine Dreams get, there is an unmistakable lure to their intensity and damaged textures. Majors’ narration, reactions, and jaded silent acts infuse a more layered human lost underneath the monstrous muscles and vices. He is undeniably impressive in those feats. Review

Because of all of this glowing style and sensational suspense, Black Bag is never dull, meaning Steven Soderbergh and his avant-garde arthouse tendencies are never pedestrian either. Review

When it’s all said and done, Queen of the Ring nailed the big fight feel in its 1954 climax that bookends the film, and they put on a barnburner. Review

It is a shame the rest of Picture This around Simone Ashley could not equal her level of vividness. Review