In May 2016, I managed to convince my wife that we should deplete the majority of our savings account in order to fly to New York…
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.
Written and directed by former Daily Show host Jon Stewart, Irresistible turns a playful yarn about a small-town mayoral race into an indictment of the division,…
Stuffed to the gills with great performances and spectacular production design, Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood — arriving on Netflix this weekend — posits a version of post-war…
Theatrical distribution may have come to a screeching halt due to the COVD-19 pandemic, but that doesn’t mean film enthusiasts are left without options. Indeed, new…
Originally scheduled to hit theaters last fall, The Hunt became mired in controversy shortly after the release of its first trailer, which featured a group of…
Director Gavin O’Connor is no stranger to sports dramas, with two superbly crafted genre entries already under his belt (2004’s Miracle and 2011’s Warrior). Reuniting with…
Despite what Sonic the Hedgehog might have you think, family films don’t have to be full of bad jokes, cringe-worthy dialogue and product placement. They don’t…
In last year’s Uncut Gems, Dinah (Idina Menzel) tells estranged husband Howard (Adam Sandler) “you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met.” It’s easy to see…
Warner Bros. got off to a shaky start with some of the early films in their DC Extended Universe: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice underperformed…
Three years ago, Dees Rees wowed audiences at the Sundance Film Festival with Mudbound, a haunting examination of racial and familial relations in the 1940s Deep…
Adrift in the complacency of long-term marriage, Pete (Will Ferrell) and Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) embark on a vacation to an upscale European ski resort with their…
Once upon a time, Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was a med school student at the top of her class, but dropped out after a mysterious event and…
To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never seen a film based on a series of Tweets before today, but Aziah “Zola” Wells’ epic recounting of…
Writer-director Guy Ritchie burst onto the scene at the end of the millennium with a pair of densely-plotted gangster comedies, 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking…
GLENDALE — “Deja fuckin’ vu, huh?” quipped Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan after the opening number of their show at Gila River Arena on Saturday. The…
The story of John Dolittle, a physician with a unique ability to understand and communicate with animals, has gone through numerous adaptations for the stage and…
The fact that Bad Boys for Life actually made it to the big screen feels like a small miracle. The previous film, Bad Boys II, was…
The sprawling fantasy world of The Witcher is probably best known from its critically acclaimed videogame adaptations, but Geralt of Rivia was first introduced in a…
2019 has been marked by several major cinematic events, including the release of Avengers: Endgame, which capped off nearly a decade of Marvel storytelling with an…
Two years removed from Rian Johnson’s divisive The Last Jedi, director J.J. Abrams returns to the franchise to cap off this latest trilogy with Star Wars:…
One of the most celebrated films of the year finally comes to home video with the Blu-ray release of Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in…
The Phoenix Critics Circle hosted its annual awards party on December 13th at the Phoenix Film Foundation office. After leading the way with nominations, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite picked…
Franchise reboots are something of a risky proposition, with many beloved properties failing to connect with audiences in the same way as their original counterparts (see…
We’re just over a month away from the 2020 edition of the Sundance Film Festival, scheduled to take place in Park City, UT from January 23rd…
After cutting his teeth on 2006’s Brick, a brilliant throwback to Dashiell Hammett detective noir set in a suburban high school, writer-director Rian Johnson is back…
Over the past few weeks, acclaimed director Martin Scorsese should have been making the press rounds and discussing his monumental new film, The Irishman, about a…
For an in-depth look at the life and legacy of Fred Rogers, the beloved host of long-running children’s show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, you can’t do much…
It’s a sunny November afternoon in Phoenix, and Frozen II supervising animator Justin Sklar is seated in a massive downtown conference room. “I feel like the…
Walt Disney Animation Studios boasts something of a shaky record when it comes to sequels: we’re not terribly far removed from the mostly dreadful straight-to-video releases…
After shaking up the superhero status quo with 2017’s violent and visceral neo-Western Logan, director James Mangold is back with something a bit more by the…
“It’s been very consuming,” says Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) in the opening moments of The Report. He’s just been asked about his work leading a Senate…
Scott Z. Burns is no stranger to crafting riveting, edge-of-your-seat cinematic fare — his writing credits include The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant, Contagion and Side Effects…
As if the streaming wars weren’t combative enough, a new player is entering the fray this week as the Walt Disney Company throws open the curtains…
Film critics, connoisseurs and historians may disagree on many fronts, but one universally accepted truth is that Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror film The Shining is a…