Movie Reviews: Pet Sematary, Shazam, Dragged Across Concrete, The Best of Enemies | Buzz Blog

Friday, April 5, 2019

Movie Reviews: Pet Sematary, Shazam, Dragged Across Concrete, The Best of Enemies

Mapplethorpe, The Public, Storm Boy, The Hummingbird Project

Posted By , and on April 5, 2019, 9:00 AM

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It's a movie weekend full of super-heroes, horror scares, fact-based stories and even Mel Gibson in the improbable role of a guy whose career might be destroyed by someone capturing him being racist on a recording.

The Best of Enemies can't quite navigate the treacherous territory between inspirational true story and "good people on both sides." S. Craig Zahler's gift for grit makes up for his slippery socio-political point-of-view in the bad-cop heist thriller Dragged Across Concrete. Another innovative artist is treated to a rote movie biopic in Mapplethorpe. A lovely adaptation of a classic children's story gets bogged down in an unnecessary framing narrative in Storm Boy. Emilio Estevez's dramaThe Public  trips clumsily over its own earnestness.

MaryAnn Johanson doesn't find much that's disturbing or moving in the new adaptation of Stephen King's Pet Sematary (pictured).

David Riedel is impressed that The Hummingbird Project manages to turn a duel over stock-trading technology into an effective thriller.

In this week's feature review, MaryAnn Johanson finds Shazam! confirming super-hero narratives as adolescent-boy wish-fulfillment.
Scott Renshaw

Scott Renshaw

Bio:
Scott Renshaw has been a City Weekly staff member since 1999, including assuming the role of primary film critic in 2001 and Arts & Entertainment Editor in 2003. Scott has covered the Sundance Film Festival for 25 years, and provided coverage of local arts including theater, pop-culture conventions, comedy,... more
David Riedel

David Riedel

Bio:
Riedel has been thinking about movies since the early ‘90s and writing about them since the mid-2000s. He runs the occasional marathon and drinks ketchup straight from the bottle.

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