REVIEW: Top Gun: Maverick [2022]

It’s time to let go. Director Joseph Kosinski pays homage to the late Tony Scott by opening his thirty-plus-years-in-the-making sequel Top Gun: Maverick with the exact same music cues, similarly propulsive aircraft carrier b-roll, and text-based intro (adding “and women” to “the handful of men”) as Top Gun. Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” kicks in to whisk us back to the 1980s if only for a couple minutes before entering an aging Navy garage with Captain Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Tom Cruise). His dogfighting days over the Indian Ocean are over. After…

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REVIEW: Sand Castle [2017]

“A war story can’t be true unless it’s got some shame attached to it” Similar to lead character PVT. Matt Ocre (Nicholas Hoult), screenwriter Chris Roessner joined the United States Army in July of 2001 to serve in the Reserves and earn college money. Two months later 9/11 changed everything. Suddenly he was thrust into a full-scale war in the Middle East and he needed to steel himself to that fact. He wasn’t in the Special Forces, Navy SEALs or Marines—he was just a soldier walking onto the frontlines like…

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REVIEW: Hidden Figures [2016]

“I’m sorry. I’m … not the custodian.” This is the film that math teachers throughout the nation have needed as an answer to each year’s smart aleck questioning, “When are we ever going to use this?” Push away the depressing nature of A Beautiful Mind‘s schizophrenia and The Man Who Knew Infinity‘s tragic end and let a true story of perseverance, intelligence, and hope take their place. Now when that smirking kid throws out his/her query as though he/she was the first to ever ask it, your reply can explain…

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