By Eze Baum

Sometimes, the first act of a film gives you the slightest amount of hope for the rest of it, only to be let down by your initial expectations being correct. That’s the case with I.S.S., a sci-fi drama that revolves around a concept not too hard to understand and one that, from reading its synopsis, I really wanted to enjoy. We begin on a rocket, following Kira (Ariana DeBose, Oscar winner for West Side Story) and Christian…

By Eze Baum

“If I had superhuman powers, wouldn’t I still have to worry about making a living or having my dates like me?” Stan Lee says this through archival footage in the opening narration of Marvel Studios’ documentary, promptly titled Stan Lee, named after the creator of the superheroes we’ve come to know and love. The documentary, directed by David Gelb (who previously worked with Disney for Obi-Wan Kenobi: A Jedi’s Return), takes us back to the beginning —…

By Eze Baum

Fraternities and sororities go just about as hand-in-hand with the idea of college as anything can. Regardless of whether or not they’re good, they certainly exist. In The Line, this comes in the form of Kappa Nu Alpha, the “big” frat on campus that’s existed since the 1700s. To set the scene, it’s 2014 — a time period made clear by the use of The Wanted’s Glad You Came as the film’s first needle drop, played over…

By Eze Baum

Almost everyone has a favorite movie. It may be the movie you consider to be the best you’ve seen or one that, when you put it on, will always cheer you up. For me, that movie is Cars, the film that sparked my passion for film and crafted me into the person I am today. It’s the first film I remember watching and one that I’ll never skip when it’s playing. For Sav Rodgers, the director of…

By Eze Baum

Films set in a single location are interesting. A genre in its own right, they become even more claustrophobic when, throughout the entire duration of the movie, only a single actor appears on the screen. This is the case of The Listener, which follows Beth (Tessa Thompson), a volunteer for a phone network that serves as a method of communication of talking and venting for those struggling with their mental health during the pandemic. Not as stressfully…

By Eze Baum

Regardless of all of the strange aspect ratio changes and excessive cuts in his Transformers movies, there’s no question that Michael Bay has an eye for action and knows how to make it enjoyable. Unfortunately, he’s not directing Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, a movie that, even if you turn your brain off, becomes numbingly dull in its second hour, wasting the best parts of the Transformers mythos on a movie that is so unsure of itself…

"Like Into the Spider-Verse, there is clear emotional reasoning behind many of the characters’ actions in the film, but it gets sidelined because, apparently, we need more massive fights that resolve themselves in some of the most mind-boggling ways imaginable. It saves all possible forms of emotional resolution and (a surprisingly well set up) payoff for the third film in the trilogy, which is given the potential to be the strongest of all three, thanks to what Across the Spider-Verse…