'Shazam!' (2019) Movie Review

Shazam! aims to say something about staying true to yourself, finding family where you can, and that you don’t need superpowers to be a hero and do extraordinary things, all wrapped in superhero origin story trappings. Those aims are all well and good, but the finished product is so saccharine and hollow, the emotion so manufactured and false, and the goofiness wears so thin so fast, it becomes insufferable and leaves a lingering bad taste.

'Annabelle: Creation' (2017) Movie Review

Horror is an odd bird. As much as the genre gets unfairly maligned for quality reasons, it does, admittedly, squeeze out more hack sequels than any other cinematic subset. Take Annabelle for instance, the quick, slapdash cash-grab of a prequel to James Wan’s The Conjuring. It’s not particularly egregious, just bland and uninspired. As opposed to The Conjuring 2, the proper follow-up, where the filmmakers took their time and made a movie that’s actually good, some may argue better than the first. All of this adds up to many folks being surprised that Annabelle: Creation, a prequel to the prequel, is actually a solid horror joint.