By Bob Garver “The Housemaid” has unofficially sold itself based on how crazy it gets in its second half. This is slightly less annoying than when movies sell themselves based on their twist endings – at least here, the twist gets a chance to breathe, and maybe there will be other twists after the initial shock – but it still creates the problem of forcing the audience to wait for something crazy to happen. As “The Housemaid” went along in a direction that made sense, the movie felt long to...

By Bob Garver Poster credit IMDB Back in 2019, brothers Benny and Josh Safdie delivered one of the best films of the year, and possibly the decade, with “Uncut Gems.” The film was, as I wrote in a review earlier this year, “a 135-minute anxiety attack.” And I mean that in the best possible way – I have enormous amounts of respect for movies and filmmakers that know just how to push my buttons. Now in 2025, the Safdie brothers have graduated to solo projects. Benny didn’t fare too well with...

By Bob Garver    Poster credit IMDB All the way back in 2009, director James Cameron introduced the world to the planet Pandora and the Na’vi race in “Avatar.” The film soon set the record for all-time highest grossing movie at both the domestic and international box offices (it still holds the record for the latter). Sequel “Avatar: The Way of Water” came out in 2022 and made its way onto the top 10 on both lists. Can three years’ worth of inflation help third installment “Fire and Ash” help...