50 Movie Reviews 2026

                                  4 Stars out of 4  In 1998, Lai Hang, a 49-year-old widow facing a terminal cancer diagnosis, shot her 17-year old son George, who suffered from severe schizophrenia. He had become obsessed with school shootings, and she worried he would act on these urges. On the day she received her prognosis, Hang took her son's life to spare him from a life alone with an untreated mental illness and to potentially spare others from the harm he might do. The case highlighted the shame and taboo surrounding mental illness within some Asian American communities, which hindered early treatment and support. Those are the facts this movie is based on.  But the way Lucy Liu humanizes this story is nothing short of extraordinary.  I remember way back when I was learning how to be a psychologist, we had to take a class on cultural awareness. This class walked a fine line betwee...

3.5 Stars out of 4   The recent TV series Adolescence, created quite a stir around the world. It even produced the youngest Emmy winner ever in Owen Cooper. It's a tough watch and extremely thought-provoking. The essential question asking, "What the hell is happening with kids right now?" That's not to suggest bullying hasn't been around for a while. Lord of the Flies is 70 year's old, but we could probably go back thousands of years before that. This movie is something different though. I remember this movie, even though it is most certainly not about growing up in my era. Children in groups (particularly around 12 or 13) can exhibit a kind of viciousness that can be hard to explain unless you've been on the wrong side of it. Sadly, I've been on both sides of this particular equation. The "plague" in this case is a skin condition a boy named Eli suffers from, that cause the others to torture him. It's nothing he did or said, but just the...

                3.5 Stars out of 4 Someone asked me the other day why I hate Marvel movies. I had to think about it for a second. It's not really that I HATE them. I just think there are a lot of stories worth telling that really happened. True stories. History. Real people. There really was a guy named Marty Reisman who hustled Ping-Pong while living one hell of a crazy life. Although this movie isn't a one-to-one Biography, there was a real guy who did a lot of this crazy stuff. But that's still not quite enough to make a great movie. You still have to tell the story in an engaging way. Shoot the scenes. Find the right actors.  Now about about that, "find the right actor" part. Man is Timothée Chalamet having a moment right now. I was pretty skeptical they could make a movie about Bob Dylan correctly. He's just too complicated. But somehow Chalamet absolutely nailed it. He's just as good here. Inhabiting a man with extreme talent and c...