New Jersey Symphony Brings 'The Godfather' To Life

by Zachary Klein, JerseyArts.com - published 2024-07-18
This August, the drama of the Corleone family and the New York mafia comes to New Jersey in a brand-new way. New Jersey Symphony will present "The Godfather Live" at two venues next month as part of their "at the movies" series – first at New Jersey Performing Arts Center (1 Center St., Newark) on Friday, Aug. 16 at 7:30 p.m. and then at The Count Basie Center for the Arts (99 Monmouth St., Red Bank) on Sunday, Aug. 18 at 3 p.m. The event is sure to bring fun for fans of the film franchise both young and old.

New Release Review - "Twisters"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-07-17
Almost 30 years after Twister swept into cinemas, Hollywood's allergy to anything resembling an original idea gives us a belated sequel that, as has proven the case with so many of these endeavours, plays more like a remake than a continuation. While recent revivals like Halloween, Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop have been built around returning protagonists, Helen Hunt is curiously absent here, probably because only the horror genre allows actresses over a certain age to headline franchise instalments.

New Release Review - "Maxxxine"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-07-14
With 2022's X, Ti West delivered a successful homage to hicksploitation thrillers like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Eaten Alive and Motel Hell. Hicksploitation is one of the easier sub-genres to imitate as all you need are some good-looking young folk to be butchered by redneck grotesqueries. That said, many filmmakers have tried and failed to emulate this simple formula, with only X and Devereux Milburn's underseen Honeydew managing to pull it off in recent years.

New Release Review - "Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-07-09
1980s Hollywood was fuelled by a simple formula, the "fish out of water." Whether it be an alien landing in the suburbs; a boorish, middle-aged Jewish comic attending college; or a young boy finding himself in the body of Tom Hanks; audiences lapped this stuff up. With 1983's fish out of water comedy Trading Places, director John Landis moulded Eddie Murphy into the '80s equivalent of Groucho Marx. Just as the Jewish Marx had done in the '30s, the African-American Murphy built his shtick around mocking wealthy white people. The movie that cemented this status was 1984's Beverly Hills Cop, in which Murphy played Axel Foley, an unfiltered Detroit undercover cop who found himself in the alien surrounds of that American centre of white elitism, Beverly Hills. The plot - something, something corruption, or something - was irrelevant. Audiences turned up to see Murphy crack wise, do funny voices and take the piss out of rich folk, and he did so with a unique and natural ease that no comic performer has matched in the decades since.

New Release Review - "A Quiet Place: Day One"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-07-04
For the third installment of his hit sci-fi franchise, A Quiet Place: Day One, John Krasinski hands the reins to fellow Polish-American filmmaker Michael Sarnoski. If you've seen Sarnoski's impressive debut, the Nicolas Cage vehicle Pig, you'll note similar elements here. As with Pig, Day One features a protagonist who has retreated into their shell, whose one friend is an animal, and who embarks on a quest in a major American city. Both movies trumpet the pleasure of simple food in key scenes. Sarnoski manages to weave his own interests into Krasinski's series in surprisingly smooth fashion, suggesting that the world of A Quiet Place can accommodate a variety of stories and perspectives.

43rd Bi-Annual New Jersey Film Festival to Take Place September 6 through October 18

(NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- The 43rd Bi-Annual New Jersey Film Festival will be taking place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between September 6 to October 18, 2024. Twenty-one films will have their New Jersey or Area Premieres at the festival, which will be a hybrid of in-person screenings at Rutgers University and titles available via video on demand. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. VOD start times are at 12 Midnight Eastern USA. In addition to the screenings, electronic music artist Jim Haynes will be doing an audio-visual concert on Friday, October 18 at 7:00pm.

New Release Review: "Kinds of Kindness"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-07-01
Yorgos Lanthimos reunites with Efthimis Filippou, his regular screenwriter before his recent Tony McNamara collaborations, for Kinds of Kindness, an anthology film consisting of three tales, all of which feature the same recurring cast members. Part of the appeal of portmanteau films is that if you're not vibing with one story you know another will come along pretty soon. With each segment running close to an hour, that's not the case here. If the absurdist tone doesn't hook you from the start, you'll likely find Kinds of Kindness a test of your patience. But while it's exhausting and unwieldy in stretches, it's entertaining and amusing often enough to make it a worthwhile venture for those already onboard with Lanthimos.

New Release Review - "The Bikeriders"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-06-26
Have you ever seen any of those awful British movies about football hooligans that seem to be released straight to VOD on a weekly basis? You know the type. They always star some combination of Danny Dyer, Craig Fairbrass and Tamer Hassan, sometimes all three. The directors always try to emulate Goodfellas, but their attempts to use voiceover to draw us into a world of pathetic masculinity always come off as lazy storytelling. Most of these movies open with a scene in which the protagonist finds himself cornered by some rivals, and the frame freezes just as he takes a punch to his mush, followed by some sort of exaltation along the lines of "You're probably wondering how a geezer like me got myself in such a norty pickle."

New Release Review - "Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com - published 2024-06-24
Once in a while a critic will have the cheek to publish a review despite not having seen a movie in its entirety. "I've seen this a hundred times before," is how they inevitably defend themselves when they're rightly attacked for such a lack of professionalism and respect for the medium. With Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter One, Kevin Costner has forced all of his new film's reviewers into the role of the unprofessional critic who forms an opinion despite having only seen half a movie, or in this case maybe only a third, or even a quarter. Costner's project is ambitiously spread across four films, with three reportedly already shot and two guaranteed a release at time of writing.