Low Budget Movie Buff: Movie Reviews

Blood-soaked contracts. Daggers to the heart. Bullets to the head. All as easy as the next breath. But single parenting and sorting out your love life? Such are challenges not for the faint of heart. Because really, who among us wouldn’t sooner snuff out a life or face down death if it meant putting off being vulnerable for a moment longer? Perhaps, that’s a hair extreme. But when you’re a world-renowned assassin struggling with work-life balance, those seemingly harsh extremes quickly become common far-too-oftens . Then you blink and its decades later, before you realize that maybe, just maybe, you’ve been avoiding what actually matters within your contract-kill-craze existence … actual life. Let’s get into it. Kill Bok-soon is written and directed by Byun Sung-hyun and stars Jeon Do-yeon as legendary killer for hire, Gil Boksoon, a single mom that can best any challenge that isn’t her distant daughter or tenuous love life. And deep within the heyday of John Wick like films and a...

Some claim that Superman’s icon crest is more recognizable than the Christian cross. And regardless of whether or not that’s true, it’s far from a baseless notion. For this day and age, it’s the superhero that acts as the modern-day myth, cult, church, role model, everything. And among the plethora of tight wearing titans, the O.G. Man of Steel remains supreme as the gold standard of hope, heroics, and hearth-side tales. So then where does that leave his, some may argue, lesser counterpart, Supergirl? Is Kara Zor-El just a one-’n-done gender swap gimmick meant to milk out a few more greenbacks from the Superman brand? Or is she a worthy carrier of the fabled crest, one that steps out from Superman’s mile high shadow to bask in her own glorious light? Well, if one were to base their decision off of her first theatrical foray, it’s hard to believe anyone would find her compelling in the slightest. But maybe, just maybe that has to do more with the offered story, rather than the heroin, ...

Life for the billions of wandering souls on this earth take a myriad of unknown paths, each twisting and looping here and there to the disparate tunes of triumph and turmoil, of splendor and horror, of serenity and pain. And no matter how similar any two paths may be, all are unique unto themselves as to how they play out, say for one detail. Because from the very moment any of us beautiful specs of stardust are fortunate or unfortunate enough to be forged into a soul and shot into this world, there has only ever been and will only ever be one constant, one commonality, one truth. At some point, we’re all gonna die.  We’re All Gonna Die is a light sci-fi, romantic-comedy road trip film, where ( in the near future ) a mysterious 10,000-mile high “spike” materializes, imbeds itself into earth, and wreaks havoc each time it teleports. Fast forwarding a year later, and struggling beekeeper, Thalia ( Ashlie Burch ), and emotionally raw EMT, Kai ( Jordan Rodriguez ), find themselves tea...

Warning! Predestination , regardless of its inferred quality, is a film best experienced without spoilers or much of any kind of priming. Whether ultimately deemed good or bad, it’s without question an original experience that will leave any viewer spinning with curiosity and clambering for discussion. All that being said, if you care to know a little more, please proceed.  “A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.” These thought-provoking words of Arthur Schopenhaur churned within me as I watched the credits roll on the thrilling cat-and-mouse time caper known as Predestination . Written by Michael and Peter Spierberg, they have crafted a mind-warping tale that follows a temporal agent ( Ethan Hawk ) as he travels back in time to make one last attempt at thwarting a mysterious and elusive mad bomber responsible for the deaths of masses upon masses of innocent lives. The question is, can the temporal agent succeed in altering this tragic past or is he mer...