Review: ‘The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ Lands on Top

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (dir. Francis Lawrence) is the newest installment in the Hunger Games saga (dir. Francis Lawrence/Gary Ross) and is a prequel about the life of a young President Snow—the face of the enemy in the original Hunger Games movies. While Ballad can be seen without any prior knowledge of the Hunger Games movies or books, it is definitely suggested, as there are many nearly imperceptible nods to the original series.

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Review: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ Positively Crosses Boundaries

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse (dir. Joaquim dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson) is the long-awaited sequel to 2019’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (dir. Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, and Bob Persichetti). The story picks up about a year after the last movie left off, as Miles (Shameik Moore) navigates his sophomore year of high school, keeping up with his family, and being Spider-Man. But this time around there’s one big difference: he’s doing it all by himself, without his friends from the Spider-verse. Or at least, that’s how things start out. But since when does anything go according to plan?

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Review: ‘A Good Person’ Sends a Good Message

Grief. It’s an emotion that is frequently paired with loss; the loss of an opportunity, an item, or in this film’s case, a loved one. It’s a complicated, messy emotion that sometimes leads a person to perform questionable actions while they are at their worst. But as A Good Person plays on, we are forced to look at the actions of almost every character and truly ask ourselves “What does it mean to be a good person?”

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Review: ‘Plane’ Didn’t Land

In today’s day and age, big budget action films dominate the box office. Wowing the audience with violence, CGI, and outlandish heroic feats, they seem to always bring in raving reviews and satiate the viewers need for a just resolution. But in Plane, one doesn’t need to be an expert to see that in writing this film doesn’t satisfy.

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Review: ‘Glass Onion’ Has Layers

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (dir. Rian Johnson) is a murder-mystery film that follows famed detective, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), in his career after the events of Knives Out (2019). Though none of the other characters are the same, the centrality of Blanc’s character breeds cohesivity between the films.

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Review: ‘Disenchanted’ is Bringing Back the Magic

Disenchanted (dir. Adam Shankman) is the sequel to Enchanted (dir. Kevin Lima) that we never knew we needed. The film starts after a time jump from the first move, where Giselle (Amy Adams) and Robert (Patrick Dempsey) have gotten married and had a child together.  Disenchanted shows what happens in the real world after “happily ever after”–and how not everything will always work perfectly.

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