Jumanji: The Next Level Delivers Some Laughs But Can't Quite Hit A High Score

The good news with Jumanji: The Next Level is that it's hard to dislike this Jake Kasdan directorial effort. How many comedy sequels can you say that about? Unfortunately, at the same time, it's also hard to really get wrapped up in this fourth entry in the Jumanji universe (yes, Jon Favreau's Zathura is apparently canon). It's not necessarily because the production is a big mess or that a singular element has gone horribly wrong in the scripting department. It's just the gags just aren't as spry as before, the adventure stuff still feels more perfunctory than it should, enough stuff comes up just short that it begins to add up after a while.

Rocketman Shows How To Do A Music Biopic Right

Just as Avatar ushered in a barrage of movies released in digital 3D and It ensured that no Stephen King book would be spared from a film adaptation, the box office success of Bohemian Rhapsody has guaranteed that the music biopic is about to be omnipresent in cinema once again. After nearly a decade of dormancy only interrupted by Straight Outta Compton, that Freddie Mercury biopic made more than enough money to ensure that the subgenre won't be facing an absence like that for quite a long time. If we're gonna get a whole heap of music biopics, can more of them be like Rocketman? Imaginatively made, fun to watch, actually thoughtful when it comes to exploring its real-life subject, as Anakin Skywalker might say, now this is music biopic filmmaking!

Don't Stop Me Now Unless I'm Planning On Seeing Bohemian Rhapsody

Walk Hard so successfully and hysterically skewered the music biopic back in December 2007 that one would hope that it inspired the makes of future music biopics to show more creativity in how they presented the lives of famous musicians. Sadly, that Jake Kasdan directorial effort ended up as a box office misfire in its initial theatrical release before becoming a cult classic and that means, aside from occasional far better than expected entries like Straight Outta Compton or Love & Mercy, music biopics have mostly stayed the same in the last decade or so. This trend extends to Bohemian Rhapsody, a music biopic of Freddie Mercury and the band Queen that falls prey to the worst elements that can crop up in these music biopics while also finding time to inject its own unique flaws into the proceedings.

Despite Being About A Real-Life Genius, A Beautiful Mind Is A Pretty Thoughtless Movie

Russell Crowe has had quite the odd career hasn't he? Now, he's a famous actor, no one would ever deny that, but after headlining two back-to-back Best Picture winners (Gladiator and the subject of this review, A Beautiful Mind) and scoring a Best Actor win, the guy starred in two big projects (Master And Commander: Far Side of The World and Cinderella Man) that underperformed financially and then headlined the box office dud A Good Year in November 2006. In the nearly twelve years since then, he's only starred in a handful of movies and mostly stuck to supporting roles. Not an odd career trajectory at all for a leading man to shift into supporting roles, it just feels, to me anyway, like Crowe's time as a leading man came and went in the blink of an eye given how buzzy he was at the start of the century.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story Hits A High Note For Outlandish Satire

In 2007, Judd Apatow seemed to have garnered the Midas Touch in that every comedic project he touched as a producer was generating massive box office. Most notably, Knocked Up and Superbad had been back-to-back box office hits in the summer of 2007 that ushered in a new age of American comedy and he would follow those two up with more box office hits like Step Brothers and Pineapple Express the subsequent year. But even in a year as golden as 2007, not everything can be a hit and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ended up being the Judd Apatow produced comedy to be a box office dud despite opening just a few months after Superbad.