Midnight Special begins in the middle of the night, with Roy Tomlin (Michael Shannon) peers nervously out the window, surveying the parking lot for any signs of…
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 idea behind collective:unconscious sounds fascinating: five indie directors coming together to create short films based on each other’s dreams. But just because an idea looks good on…
In 1983, the Jules Rimet Trophy – awarded to the winner of the FIFA World Cup – was stolen from its display case at the Brazilian…
When Seth (Dominic Monaghan) recognizes former classmate Holly (Ksenia Solo) on a city bus, he tries to strike up a conversation. She doesn’t remember him, and the…
Moving to a new high school in the middle of small town America is bad enough, but an altercation with a fellow student finds Annie (Nichole Bloom)…
Director Fede Alvarez is certainly no stranger to the SXSW Film Festival – his ultraviolent remake of Sam Raimi’s horror classic Evil Dead played to a…
More than two decades after Richard Linklater perfectly captured the feeling of being a mid-1970s high school student in his breakout film, Dazed and Confused, the…
The 2016 SXSW Film Festival gets underway in just a few days, and once again we’ll be in Austin, Texas to cover the opening weekend of…
One wouldn’t think that predators and prey would be able to peacefully co-exist, but Disney’s Zootopia posits a world where animals have evolved past their primal…
2015 marked the first time in eight years that Walt Disney Animation did not release a new film, but with two Pixar offerings last year, you’d…
We reviewed Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur for its theatrical release last year, and decided to give it another look as the film makes its way to…
The 88th Annual Academy Awards ceremony took place earlier this evening, with Chris Rock hosting the event at the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles. Mad Max:…
Opening with a thrilling bank heist perpetrated by a group of highly-skilled and heavily-armed operatives, John Hillcoat’s Triple 9 throws its first curveball somewhere around the 15-minute mark,…
Eddie (Taron Egerton) has spent his entire life dreaming of becoming an Olympic athlete, despite a complete lack of anything that could even remotely be mistaken…
A decidedly old-fashioned yarn about a Puritan family trying to survive in the wilderness of 1600s New England, The Witch feels like the antithesis of modern…
It’s been just over 18 months since a two-minute clip of test footage for a Deadpool film leaked onto the internet. After a bastardized version of the character…
Capital Pictures boss Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin) is having a crisis – multiple crises, if we’re being truthful. Aquatic musical performer DeeAnna Moran (Scarlett Johansson) is…
With our first trip to the Sundance Film Festival behind us, we’re looking ahead to the future, and our return to Austin, Texas for the 2016…
Somehow, I managed to miss out on seeing Bridge of Spies when it opened theatrically last year. Every time I would make tentative plans to finally…
In the winter of 1952, the combination of an arrogant captain and a brutal storm results in the hull of the SS Pendleton rupturing so violently that…
Back in 2013, writer and director Matt Johnson turned heads at the Slamdance Film Festival with his feature-length debut, The Dirties, which followed a pair of…
On Sunday night, my first trip to the Sundance Film Festival came to an end with the world premiere of Yoga Hosers, the second installment of…
One of my favorite selections from the 2016 Sundance Film Festival was Sleight, director JD Dillard’s crowd-pleasing tale about a young street magician (Jacob Latimore) that…
Leaving a party at his brother’s fraternity, Brad Land (Ben Schnetzer) reluctantly agrees to offer a ride to a pair of guys who claim they saw…
After his mother passes away shortly before the end of his senior year, aspiring street magician Bo (Jacob Latimore) is left as the sole caretaker of…
The idea that the United States faked the moon landing is one of the most popular and long-lasting conspiracy theories, having been around in one form…
After making a splash with his Oscar-nominated drama The Broken Circle Breakdown, Belgian director Felix van Groeningen was on hand to open the 2016 Sundance Film…
Burned out by the Hollywood lifestyle, disaffected celebrity Tom (Garrett Hedlund) journeys into the desert to clear his head, but the tranquility and solitude of his…
The 2016 Sundance Film Festival begins this Thursday, January 21, and we’ll be in Park City to cover opening weekend for the very first time. I’ve dreamed…
Now that the 2016 Golden Globes have come and gone, attention is turning toward the 88th Annual Academy Awards, which will be presented on February 28…
With the debut of AMC’s comic adaptation Preacher scheduled for sometime in early 2016, news about the project has slowly begun to trickle out. On Thursday, we…
There may be a few days left on the calendar, but for all intents and purposes 2015 has come to a close, and now it’s time to…
Quentin Tarantino’s eighth feature film, The Hateful Eight, has enjoyed an interesting journey to the big screen. Shortly after being announced, an early draft of the film’s script…
One year after his Oscar-winning portrayal of physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne turns in the best performance of his career in The Danish…