Joshua Starnes

Joshua Starnes VitalThrills.com May 19, 2025 6.5/10 Looking back, we thought the outcome of Fallout showed a filmmaking team that had cracked the code of the series, hinting at increasing success to come. Instead, we were at the apex and didn’t realize it. It was all downhill from there. Go to Full Review Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) 80% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Apr 20, 2025 7.5/10 Rule Breakers is exactly what it says on the tin, a satisfying and uplifting tale of struggle against the forces it seems like we should have left behind by now. Go to Full Review Rule Breakers (2025) 80% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Feb 12, 2025 6.5/20 It’s a Marvel film, no more, no less. Go to Full Review Captain America: Brave New World (2025) 46% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Feb 2, 2025 7.5/10 It’s easy to be cynical about the inspiring melodrama because of its tendency (like the sports film or romantic comedy) to fall into formula and offer little surprise or insight, but that misses the point of the genre. Go to Full Review Brave the Dark (2023) 73% - -

Joshua Starnes VitalThrills.com Dec 13, 2024 7/10 There is a solid action thriller buried within Kraven the Hunter‘s heart — it’s easily the best of the Sony non-Spider-Man films so far (it’s a low bar) — and with a little more restraint it could have brought out. Go to Full Review Kraven the Hunter (2024) 15% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Nov 30, 2024 7/10 Ben Smallbone’s Homestead flies in the face of hoary cliches, suggesting even in the darkest hours grace is not a weakness. Go to Full Review Homestead (2024) 43% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Nov 29, 2024 6.50/10 Give up on the idea of spies or overwrought war film and grab onto the real words somewhat hidden within and Bonhoeffer has its own worthwhile truths to share. Go to Full Review Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin. (2024) 66% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Nov 19, 2024 7/10 Why do people do what they do? Don’t expect anyone to ever tell you, or even be able to tell you, especially if they’re a serial killer in a movie. The answer is both obvious and capricious because that’s what people are much of the time. Go to Full Review Effigy: Poison and the City (2019) 100% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Nov 18, 2024 8/10 A little bit of John Cassavetes and a little bit of Whit Stilman mixed into a heady New York stew, Alex Andre’s Pratfall feels like an artifact of 80s and 90s independent cinema escaped into the now. Go to Full Review Pratfall (2023) 90% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Nov 11, 2024 7.5/10 Gladiator II has its twists and turns and if nothing else a bravura sense of scale only studio epics have ever managed (and only a handful of working directors can do as well) but also a studied refusal to ignore how much of the original it is repeating. Go to Full Review Gladiator II (2024) 70% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Oct 28, 2024 3/10 Nothing but random scenes which go nowhere but eat up screen time allowing for a technically feature length film to be attached to the appropriate numeral of related derivations to separate suckers from their money. Go to Full Review Venom: The Last Dance (2024) 40% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Oct 17, 2024 6.5/10 As Brady’s camera tells us with every lush visage and flowing animal form there is life still out there and where there is life, there is hope. Go to Full Review Escape from Extinction Rewilding (2024) 86% - -

Joshua Starnes VitalThrills.com Sep 27, 2024 6/10 Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a grand experiment. A frustrating but enthralling dive into Coppola’s vision of what film (and, by extension, life itself) are, have been and could be. Go to Full Review Megalopolis (2024) 46% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Sep 3, 2024 7/10 A dedicated approbation to the work of a local religious community trying to provide families for an epidemic of orphaned children Sound of Hope is one of those elegies that means well even if that means ignoring the rougher portions of their story. Go to Full Review Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot (2024) 82% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Jul 26, 2024 4.5/10 It's a stew no one has bothered to taste even as they throw more and more into it because it doesn’t matter what it tastes like, only what can be put into it. Go to Full Review Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) 77% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Jul 26, 2024 6.5/10 Everyone involved knows exactly how to make this film and Sight flows, easily and without trouble. Go to Full Review Sight (2023) 74% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Jun 29, 2024 7.5/10 The unbelievability of A Quiet Place’s central conceit hasn’t held the series back the way it could due to focus on characters as much as suspense. Day One takes that even further, pushing its threats to the edge of the screen to better center its humans. Go to Full Review A Quiet Place: Day One (2024) 86% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon May 6, 2024 7/10 An easy, breezy romantic adventure that makes some passing gestures at the language of film and how it works, and some pointed ones at the role (and appreciation) of stunts within the larger production world, but not much else. Go to Full Review The Fall Guy (2024) 81% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Apr 24, 2024 6.5/10 There are times we go to the movies to see complex investigations of compelling characters or themes we must spend time with and change us. Then there are times when we just want to see a bunch of evildoers meet grizzly ends because they deserve it. Go to Full Review The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (2024) 67% - -

Joshua Starnes Firing the Canon Apr 6, 2024 6.5/10 Simultaneously kinetic and thrilling, and long and drawn out, Dev Patel’s directorial debut Monkey Man is a study in contrasts, both succeeding wildly and falling short and frequently within the same scene. Go to Full Review Monkey Man (2024) 89% - -