Grant Minnick's Movie Reviews

  “We live in a twilight world.” - The Protagonist         Tenet is the latest film from legendary director Christopher Nolan.  It stars John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Elizabeth Debicki.  The film tells the complicated story of a man known simply as the Protagonist, as he and a group of others attempt to stop a Russian oligarch from destroying the world using a process known as inversion.  From there, the characters are led to different locations across the globe as they grapple with enemies both in the future and the past. Tenet was one of my most anticipated films of this year.  It was supposed to release over the summer, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed multiple times.  I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to see the film in a theater setting as opposed to watching it at home like so many other people have been doing for films t...

  “I don’t even think you know what a bad day is.” - Tom Cooper Unhinged is a thriller directed by Derrick Borte.  It stars Russell Crowe as Tom Cooper, a man with serious anger issues.  When he is cut off in traffic by a woman named Rachel, he makes it his personal mission to make Rachel’s life a living hell.  He follows her around in his truck, repeatedly rams her car with his, and causes all sorts of chaos by threatening to kill Rachel and her loved ones until he gets an apology. When I saw the trailers for this film, I was pumped.  “Russell Crowe playing a deranged psychopath on a road-rage-fueled rampage?  This could be awesome,” I thought.  Boy, was I wrong.  Unhinged was incredibly disappointing for me because it had the potential to be great, but it wasted all that potential by displaying one-note characters, terrible dialogue, dull color grading, unconvincing acting, and writing so bad a five-year-old could’ve penned the entire script. ...

“Why do you fight against us, so far away from where you are needed?” - Hanoi Hannah Da 5 Bloods is the newest film directed by Spike Lee, and it stars Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Chadwick Boseman, and Jonathan Majors.  The film tells the tale of four Black veterans who return to Vietnam in the present day to bring home the remains of a fallen soldier.  However, that isn’t their only mission.  They are also there to recover a cache of buried gold and split the money between the four of them.   Da 5 Bloods is an incredibly intense yet heartfelt film, and it’s also very important and relevant to what’s going on in the world today.  It’s an extremely politically charged movie, and while that could be a turn-off for some people, I think it’s the type of film that needs to be seen regardless of who you are.  It’s informative and educational, and it gives the viewer knowledge about our current political climate as well as t...

“She won’t let death get in the way of her job.” - James Bond Spectre is a 2015 film directed by Sam Mendes, and is the fourth film to star Daniel Craig as James Bond.  In this film, Bond is led right to the heart of a mysterious organization known as Spectre.  He finds out that all of his adversaries from the previous three films all have ties to Spectre, and the leader of the organization has an important connection to Bond’s past.  Meanwhile, a man named Max Denbigh challenges M by claiming that MI6 is irrelevant, and decides that there is no use for the program anymore. When it first released in 2015, Spectre didn’t get great reviews.  It received quite a bit of hate from fans, which in my opinion is completely undeserved.  I actually thoroughly enjoyed Spectre .  I think the problem that viewers experienced when the film released was that they were expecting another Skyfall .  Sam Mendes had so much success with Skyfall that he was bro...

“I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field.” - Q Skyfall was directed by Sam Mendes and is the third film to star Daniel Craig as James Bond.  The film also stars Judi Dench, Ben Whishaw, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, and Naomie Harris.  At the beginning of this film, Agent 007 is shot off the top of a train and goes missing.  When MI6 is attacked by a cyber-terrorist, Bond comes out of hiding to help.  But there is one problem: When Bond was shot, he was presumed dead by MI6, which means that he will now have to pass a number of physical tests to regain his status as an Agent before he can go off to save the day. When Quantum of Solace turned out to be mediocre, along came Skyfall to breathe life back into the Bond franchise again.  Skyfall has everything I want from a Bond film.  It has humor, action, suspense, witty dialogue, excellent costuming and makeup, ...