Nick Kush

I like to think I’m a fan of most film genres, but there’s something about a taut mystery that is extra exciting. Disappearance at Clifton Hill channels a lot of what makes the genre great, trapping…

Dating at a young age is like trying to maneuver through a minefield, especially in relationships that go horribly wrong. You still have no idea who you are, and you can almost forget knowing how…

The strangest feeling I had in quite some time was elation after watching this year’s Academy Awards. Who would have thunk it, the Academy made a cool choice for Best Picture! Although, with the benefit…

I’m always fascinated by what people in the industry can do with such limited resources. It’s a constant reminder that filmmaking is a marvel. And also that it’s hard. Incredibly hard. Amazingly, for Olympic Dreams, director…

Title pun aside, it was only a matter of time before Hollywood remade Ruben Östland’s Force Majeure. The premise is just too good to pass up, being both a high-concept, attention-grabbing jumping-off point for marketing…

When it comes to dunking on things that seem really, really stupid, the internet is just about undefeated. The weekend brought with it an exception to that rule: Sonic the Hedgehog. The big-screen adaptation of…

I had a funny experience when I caught up with Netflix’s Miss Americana, the Taylor Swift documentary which captures her political awakening while also recapping her career and work leading up to the release of…

After my first experience at Sundance last year, I arrived this year at the festival cognizant of the hyperbolic reactions that come with the environment. (Or, at the very least, I did my best. I’m…

Birds of Prey came in well below studio and industry expectations, battling a slew of Oscar-nominated movies as well as other popular movies in their latest weeks of release. Was it the quality of the…

Sundance 2020 was a whirlwind experience, to say the least. Both Collin and I are still shaking off the cobwebs from the week spent in Park City, but the lack of sleep didn’t stop us…

The polls below will close at 12 p.m. EST on the day of the Academy Awards, February 9th, 2020. Be sure to get your votes in by then! Another year, another round of bizarre nominations…

There are precious few films that announce their brilliance in their opening moments. Minari is one of those films — and I’m positive that this isn’t the “Sundance high” talking that frequently comes with reactions…

Bad Boys 2 may be the best bad movie ever made. Not in the same sense as ironic classics The Room and Plan 9 from Outer Space, which offer nothing but laughs at pure incompetence and…

Bad Boys for Life is the most pleasant surprise of 2020 thus far, opening to huge numbers over the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend. Already earning $112 million worldwide against a $90 million budget and…

In the ashes of the Soviet Union, Russia was looking for a makeover, ditching socialism in exchange for capitalism. It was supposed to signify a rebirth of sorts, a turning of the page for a…

Rod Goldman and Al Silverman are street performers who work the tourist scene of Times Square. Goldman gets no respect and Silverman is the first one to make sure of that.   Credits Directed By:…

Ah, January, a time when every critic wonders why they even bother. I often think that studios think something similar as they release bottom-of-the-barrel material with a lazy shrug that says, “well, at least we…

The last bit of text before the credits come over the screen in Just Mercy reads “For every 9 people who have been executed in the U.S., one person on death row has been proven…

With a few days to reflect on all the movies I watched in the last calendar year, I feel very content with 2019’s slate. But I still watched a ton of crap. Too much, in…

Was 2019 a good or bad year for movies? Who’s to say. Regardless of what the immediate outcome is at the Oscars in a few months, we won’t know for sure until years down the…

By the power of Netflix, Marriage Story, a fairly serious drama about an insanely contentious divorce, has been memed to death by Film Twitter and beyond. Stills of Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson arguing about…

There’s no denying that Star Wars has become one of the most popular franchises in film history, if not the most popular. George Lucas changed the cinematic landscape back in 1977, and we’ve felt it ever since. …

Uncut Gems feels like it is partially plucked from my dream journal. It has so many things that I love or am captivated by, from a New York-based crime story to a great Adam Sandler…

We should bar every critic from calling 1917 a “cinematic achievement”, a “technical achievement”, or any derivation of the two. It’s an overused phrase in film discourse as it is, but 1917 has only made…

Anyone that is familiar with Noah Baumbach’s work would know that Marriage Story isn’t necessarily breaking new ground. He’s made his career on telling family dramas about individuals in metropolitan areas, specifically New York. Most…

Over the years, coming-of-age films have taught me one overarching idea: rebellious teens gotta rebel. It’s a timeless idea baked into coming-of-age tales from every generation in which a young adult begins to form their…

Since Netflix began pumping out original content every single week, there’s been a clear difference between their high-end properties such as Roma or the upcoming The Irishman and something such as Tall Girl or Sierra Burgess is a Loser. Putting…

Every so often, I watch a movie and am immediately filled with dread afterward because I have no idea how to discuss it. Any critic will tell you that the hardest reviews are those you…

I don’t envy the nearly impossible task that director Mike Flanagan had in developing Doctor Sleep. Not only would he have to successfully adapt what is, by all accounts, a fairly sprawling work by Stephen…

So far in his career, Taika Waititi has essentially told two kinds of stories: ones that are nothing but unabashedly goofy chaos (think What We Do in the Shadows or Thor: Ragnarok) or a coming-of-age…

I’m one of the few people that ride for Terminator: Rise of the Machines. Maybe less so for the actual content of the film — I find it a solid if semi-disposable sequel with an awesomely…

Joker remains a box office sensation by reclaiming the top spot at the box office, wrestling it away from Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, which continues to be a movie that exists. The Todd Phillips’ movie…

At this point, it’s a cliché to say how we take our most basic functions for granted. Hearing a loved one, having clarity of the mind, for instance. There’s also a reason why those kinds…

A movie entitled “Joker” has arrived in theaters. Odds are that you may have heard about it. Maybe. Joker is all over the place from fire memes to fire think pieces. Everyone has an opinion,…

With Joker being such a blatant homage to the works of Martin Scorsese and other filmmakers that told scuzzy New York dramas in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s interesting timing that Scorsese himself, while on…

Though he certainly never left, 2019 is a bit of a mini-comeback for Brad Pitt, with high-profile roles in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and now Ad Astra. He’s on-screen for almost all of…

I’ve had my eye on Ad Astra for some time now. Brad Pitt has a way of teaming up with very thoughtful and fairly singular filmmakers that always gets me excited. That’s not to say…

Focus Features made history with the release of Downton Abbey this weekend which went on to earn approximately $31 million, which became the studio’s largest opening in history — and impressive feat for a well-entrenched…

2017’s It remains one of the most surprising smash hits of the decade. People went nuts over it, and it started another round of Stephen King adaptations in Hollywood. Two years later, we’re back in…

Sometimes, the Academy of Arts and Sciences leaves you saying, “wait, you chose that as the Best Picture winner?”  People have said this phrase quite a bit over the years, and there’s no doubting that the Academy…