Film Review: “Sonic the Hedgehog 2”

The colorful SEGA spiny mammals are back and fully charged!

If there’s one thing the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog films have shown, it’s that Jim Carrey is sorely missed as a regular on-screen presence. His performance in 2020’s Sonic the Hedgehog was, not so arguably, the best part of the film and without it the film would’ve been easily dismissed. The sequel, coming out only two years after the first, is a rare instance of more-is-better working for a franchise. Carrey remains the main draw, and he once again delivers the manic goods. Two new colorful iconic characters from the SEGA game’s universe, Tails and Knuckles, are fun additions. Unsurprisingly, the addition of extended plotlines surrounding minor side characters isn’t as fun. Like a broken record, I’ll once again say that movies are too long these days. Sonic 2 is twenty minutes too long (23 minutes longer than the first movie). Despite some extraneous tangents, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 doubles down on the jokes, the action, and the energy.

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Film Review: This is Where I Leave You

This family puts the fun in ‘dysfunction’

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Sister and brother Wendy and Judd (Tina Fey and Jason Bateman) take a time-out together.

Director Shawn Levy, whose previous efforts include the funny but lightweight Night at the Museum and the mediocre Google commercial (er, film) The Internship might not seem like an obvious choice to bring Jonathan Tropper’s more literary serio-comic novel This is Where I Leave You to the big screen. But Levy has the good fortune to be working with a screenplay written by Tropper himself, as well as an extraordinary cast of both up and coming and tried and true talent. This collaboration has yielded one of the year’s most highly enjoyable pictures. Continue reading “Film Review: This is Where I Leave You”