Author: Rob Dean

Some movies seek to be cool and some are inherently cool. Obviously, all films want to be engaging in their own way, but certain filmmakers are clearly striving to create cult-like icons out of their characters, thinking less about how it works as a piece of entertainment and more about how it will look as a poster in a dorm room or when it’ll be referenced in song lyrics. From the beginning, with its stylized framing, epic dialogue, commanding score and opening credits sequence where the actors strike poses as their characters, “The Harder They Fall” is absolutely trying to…

“Army of Thieves,” a prequel of sorts to Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead,” is a curiosity on many levels. It’s no secret that Snyder, writer Shay Hatten, Netflix and others are attempting to construct an expansive cinematic universe spiraling out of the Vegas-based zombie outbreak at the center of “Army of the Dead.” It’s commendable and sensible that the first connected movie isn’t zombie-focused but is instead more interested in the heist aspect. It creates the illusion of a broader world with shared strains across different genres while delaying burnout from doing the same type of stories. On the…

Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series is probably one of the most popular franchises in history that is the least known by people. Generations have read the books or encountered some adaptation or property based on them. But while many folks may recognize the nods and winks to the series in other shows and movies, if asked to explain what a “mentat” is or why the lead character may actually be a villain, the average person’s face would likely glaze over in confusion and annoyance. Herbert’s creation melds historical events, mystic branches of Abrahamic religions and the hero’s journey to deliver a…

This review comes with a caveat that everything written here about “Halloween Kills” may be completely nullified by events in “Halloween Ends,” the final entry in the David Gordon Green/Blumhouse sequel trilogy to 1978’s “Halloween.” This is technically true of many other movies; even within this franchise, “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” probably would have fared better upon initial viewing if folks knew that it had nothing to do with the Michael Myers stories of the first two “Halloween” films. But “Halloween Kills” was always planned and produced in conjunction with “Halloween Ends,” and the ending is so abrupt…

Stephen King wrote “The Shining” as a way of dealing with his destructive alcoholism and the darkness that people hide that can cause great pain. Stanley Kubrick saw “The Shining” as a larger allegory for how the past builds on top of each other, as well as how everywhere and everyone is a haunted house full of ghosts, with each person serving as a link that begins at the dawn of time and extends to present day. King famously hates the Kubrick adaptation, while many people love it. Different authors bring different perspectives to the stories they choose to tell,…

Any sort of psychological work that people do on themselves is based on a matter of choices. Usually, the path forward requires difficult decisions, with consistent effort applied over a long period of time. Even though this is one of the central themes of “The Starling,” the filmmakers apparently didn’t always heed their own words. Filled with impressive talent who turn in layered performances, some rough subject matter and a moving original soundtrack, director Theodore Melfi’s movie has moments of true grace and poetry that then give way to obvious scenes that one would expect from a prestige awards contender.…

Gaslighting, both as a phrase and an understood concept, has gained wider social appreciation and adoption in the past few years. This has been tied to the rise of Orwellian doublespeak in politics, reports of the powerful committing heinous acts and then obfuscating the truth, and a growing understanding of how abusers make their victims question sanity itself. That’s a pretty good backdrop for approaching “Dear Evan Hansen,” as the plot revolves around acts of gaslighting, but the entire movie is also a grotesque exercise in denying reality all its own. Out of context, some scenes and songs are powerful…

The past few years have seen a growing backlash against entertainment that prominently (and without criticism) features police in heroic roles. While there has always been discourse and critiques around “copaganda” in media, this analysis has grown in volume and urgency alongside the Black Lives Matter movement and other actions that highlight the over-militarization of police and far-too-numerous examples of law enforcement being above the law. Most cop-driven action movies portray the heroes as always being right, creating a sense of ends that justify the means as they take liberties with the proper ways of handling suspects or an investigation.…

So many figures of the late 20th century became indelible fixtures through very memorable physical appearances and idiosyncratic behavior displayed on a national (and sometimes global) stage. It was as if a bunch of newsworthy people decided to arrive in the spotlight already boiled down to a caricature of themselves and pre-packaged for their inevitable portrayals on late-night talk shows and “Saturday Night Live.” Part of this seems to simply be happenstance, but it also speaks to the media-savvy nature of many of these characters. Most of them had been around entertainment or knew how marketing efforts worked for political…

At the beginning of the 2010s, filmmakers fell in love again with neon lighting. Of course, those bright-colored bulbs never went away, but with “Drive,” “Only God Forgives” and “John Wick,” neon came back in a big way in tons of stylish action, sci-fi, horror and even dramatic movies. Part of it was nostalgia, but it was also a reaction to the pervasive muted color schemes in so much mainstream fare. It became easy to see this move as an impressively cinematic choice by serious filmmakers that demonstrated an obvious devotion to stylized cinematography and lighting. That wasn’t always the…