Joseph Beyer | Author

July 22, 2023

Should you choose to accept the mission, before you rush out to see the seventh installment of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible franchise, you’ll need to clear your schedule for the 2 hour and 43 minute film (and more in 2024 if you’d like to see the second part f… Read More >>

Film Review: Asteroid City

July 8, 2023

While the conventions of a play within a play or a film within a film are well known and explored, Wes Anderson’s delightful desert romp Asteroid City is neither, but instead, something new. A film within a play? A Greek tragedy within a government amusement park? An allegory… Read More >>

Film Review: Stan Lee

June 24, 2023

Not many people get to experience the God-like feeling of creating your own universe (or multiverse, as it became), but that’s exactly what happened to young Stanley Martin Lieber when he unexpectedly found himself running a comic book empire at the age of 17.

The whole true s… Read More >>

Film Review: ​​Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

June 10, 2023

From the first visually-hypnotizing frames and pulsing tones of the opening overture, the epic follow-up Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse had me spellbound. In fact, it may have made me believe again there is a reason to watch a movie on the largest screen possible.

Thin… Read More >>

Film Review: Wild Life

May 27, 2023

The idea that you can become bolder, more creative, and more daring as you enter your last phase of life may seem counterintuitive, but 72-year-old environmental advocate Kristine “Kris” Tompkins shows us it’s possible in the new documentary Wild Life, a portrait … Read More >>

Film Review: How to Blow Up a Pipeline

May 13, 2023

As another Earth Day has recently come and gone—with our only known inhabitable world in an even worse climate crisis than in the 1970s when the environmental holiday began—this critic found himself drawn to a flinty new independent film with a title as straightforward as the pl… Read More >>

Film Review: Air

April 29, 2023

In the money-for-nothing world of the 1980s where Nike couldn’t give their kicks away for free, the proposition of throwing all their corporate soles into a single basket with a single basketball endorsement sounded crazy even to rebel Phil Knight, founder of Nike, a then-mocked newco… Read More >>

Film Review: Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game

April 15, 2023

You may not know it, but we live in a mini pinball mecca here in northern Michigan, with a vibrant underground culture of players and pinheads, tournaments, and cool arcades showcasing the full range of classic to contemporary machines and “action.” So when Scott Pierson (owner … Read More >>

Film Review: Creed III

April 8, 2023

It was hard to imagine that a boxing film—one of cinema’s most predictable and enduring genres—could still hold surprises for audiences, but that’s exactly what happened in 2015 when a young director Ryan Coogler (Fruitvale Station and Black Panther… Read More >>

Film Review: 80 for Brady

Feb. 18, 2023

If you’re tempted to fall for the marketing and take your mom, grandma, or bestie to 80 for Brady thinking that you’ll have a great time, let me try to run interference and encourage you to call an audible for something else.

While it’s clear that 80 f… Read More >>

Film Review: Wildcat