Ballerina marks the latest entry in the ever-expanding John Wick universe, and the first proper spinoff to step out from behind the shadow of the Baba…
Author: Brent Hankins
Brent Hankins
Brent Hankins has been blogging and writing film reviews online since 2011. He joined the Phoenix Film Critics Society in 2013, and was a founding member of the Phoenix Critics Circle the following year, where he currently serves as President. Brent also hosted the weekly Drinks and Discourse podcast for nearly 5 years, and is currently the editor-in-chief at The Lamplight Review. He resides in Tempe, AZ with his wife and son.
The summer of 2021 unveiled something genuinely exciting in the horror landscape: Leigh Janiak’s Fear Street trilogy. Here was a cinematic endeavor that understood the assignment,…
Marvel’s latest entry, Thunderbolts*, arrives at a strange crossroads for the MCU. Once the most reliable engine in modern blockbuster filmmaking, the franchise has lost momentum…
Yadang: The Snitch opens with some pretty familiar crime thriller tropes: a drug bust gone sideways, a cop chasing ghosts, a fixer with too many phones…
Gareth Evans didn’t exactly set out to reinvent the wheel with Havoc, he just wants to see it catch fire and careen off a freeway overpass…
A tight, slightly ridiculous, occasionally stressful movie about a woman trying to survive the worst first date of her life, Drop — the latest from Happy…
Francesca Eastwood has been carving out a career for herself outside of her famous last name, taking on a variety of roles across film and television.…
Professional wrestling and Hollywood have always had a somewhat complicated relationship. The sport (or, if you prefer, “sports entertainment”) thrives on larger-than-life personalities and dramatic stakes…
With a history of collaboration spanning some three decades, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have long been a powerful pairing, and their partnership yields some of…
Premiering as part of the 75th Berlinale, Burhan Qurbani’s No Beast. So Fierce. is an audacious modern reworking of Richard III, transposing Shakespeare’s tragedy from 15th-century…
The image of the aging assassin has long been a fixture of action cinema, typically reserved for weary hitmen on one last job or reluctant mentors…
I’ve been a huge fan of Bong Joon-ho for years, and while the bulk of his filmography is remarkable, two films in particular stand out: Snowpiercer…
German director Tom Tykwer’s latest offering, The Light (or Das Licht), is the kind of movie that swings big but lands awkwardly, arriving with grand ambition…
With Captain America: Brave New World, Marvel Studios continues its long, winding effort to recalibrate the MCU. It’s a film that wants to stand on its…
Now for the final stretch! Sundance 2025 had its fair share of unexpected gems, divisive oddities, and films that sparked conversations. Let’s wrap things up with…
In Train Dreams, director Clint Bentley delivers a striking adaptation of Denis Johnson’s novella, crafting a meditation on fate and grief, and how the passage of…
Writer-director James Sweeney’s Twinless begins with an off-screen car accident and an abrupt cut to a funeral — a tonal whiplash moment that immediately sets the…
Laura Casabé’s The Virgin of the Quarry Lake, premiering in the World Cinema Dramatic category at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, fuses gothic horror with the…
Sierra Falconer’s debut feature, Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake), unfolds like a series of postcards from a small-town summer: vivid, fleeting, and quietly profound.…
Leigh Whannell seemed like the perfect filmmaker to breathe new life into Universal’s Wolf Man. Not only was he the creative voice behind Saw and Insidious…
Grand Theft Hamlet sounds like the setup for a joke: a group of actors trying to perform Shakespeare’s Hamlet inside the chaotic, violence-filled world of Grand…
The Prosecutor finds martial arts legend Donnie Yen stepping into dual roles as both leading man and director, delivering a film that combines the intensity of…
Japan’s occupation of Korea during the early 20th century resulted in a bloody, decades-long struggle for independence, and Woo Min-ho’s visually stunning historical thriller Harbin seeks…
The original Moana holds a very special place in my heart. It was the first movie I was invited to screen on the Disney studio lot…
After a record breaking weekend at the global box office, Universal Pictures’ Wicked has now become the most nominated film by the HCA in the organization’s…
In Gladiator II, Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated sequel to his thrilling 2000 epic, sixteen years have passed since Maximus Decimus Meridius gave his life for a better…
Venom: The Last Dance is a film that seems to be in conflict with its own identity, trying to deliver the chaotic fun and irreverence that…
Ali Abbasi’s The Apprentice is a story not just about the making of a man, but about the forging of a certain type of power –…
Will Ferrell and Harper Steele have been close friends for decades, since the pair first met on the set of Saturday Night Live, where Steele would…
This week, a cinematic pairing the likes of which has long been on the wishlists of comic fans across the globe will finally be realized as…
Legacy sequels have become a staple of modern Hollywood fare, with studio executives seemingly hellbent on dragging every semi-recognizable IP out of mothballs and thrusting it…
First-time filmmaker Delaney Buffett boldly steps into the spotlight with Adult Best Friends, a film she wrote, directed, and stars in — a tall order for…
The rebooted Planet of the Apes series — particularly the latter two films directed by Matt Reeves — is one of my favorite film trilogies of…
Films about filmmaking are often at their best when championing the process while simultaneously poking fun at the inherent absurdity of the Hollywood machine. Case in…