Joseph Quinn Archives | Deep Focus Review

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Brian Eggert — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:24:40 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes as close to greatness as MCU movies get. Accented by a dazzling retro-futurist style and strong characters played by a pitch-perfect cast, it adheres to the save-the-world formula found in many superhero movies: Planet Earth faces an impossible threat from outer space, and only the titular heroes can save us. However, instead of the flat digital environments and lack of distinct visual flair found in most movies of this ilk, there’s a wonderful alternate reality for audiences to explore, set in a version of the 1960s replete with spaceships, robots, and flying cars. The movie instills an instant desire to investigate this familiar yet unique world, something most MCU movies cannot claim. Rather than feeling like The Fantastic Four is more of the same, it feels alive and new—an inspired variation on a theme that, admittedly, has already been tackled onscreen but to subpar effect. With a terrific cast who embody their iconic characters and a visual energy that presents a refreshing alternative to the Marvel house style, The Fantastic Four is not only immediately engaging but also one of the MCU’s most satisfying offerings yet. […]

The post The Fantastic Four: First Steps appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Warfare

Brian Eggert — Fri, 11 Apr 2025 04:38:26 +0000

Imagine receiving a knock on your door, and when you answer, soldiers enter your home and establish a temporary post to look for their enemies. They usher you, your spouse, and your two children into the bedroom while they occupy your house and prevent you from leaving. With men posted at every window, they watch the urban residential neighborhood, looking for suspicious activity. You and your family sit in the bedroom in terror, where you’re told to keep quiet and stay put. Eventually, insurgents attack from outside. Over the next 90 minutes or so, the soldiers take fire. When it’s over, your home is left riddled with bullet holes and drenched in the soldiers’ blood. The second floor has been blown to smithereens by tanks, which transport the soldiers away, leaving you rattled and your home in shambles. All your spouse can do is scream, “Why?!” This story is told in Warfare, although I’ve just given the Iraqi family homeowners more attention than the movie did. Instead, this is a battle reenactment feature about a real-life situation involving Navy SEALs in 2006. But it’s so focused on recreating the events from the SEAL’s perspective that it leaves no room for […]

The post Warfare appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

Gladiator II

Brian Eggert — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 02:01:24 +0000

In Gladiator II, Paul Mescal plays a strong, silent type—a warrior poet, a brooding hero. No matter how you describe him, Mescal, star of Aftersun (2022) and All of Us Strangers (2023), inhabits a breed of arena-bound gladiator different from Russell Crowe’s Maximus in Ridley Scott’s 2000 original. Maximus was a career soldier: “The general who became a slave; the slave who became a gladiator; the gladiator who defied an emperor.” Mescal plays Lucius, the grown-up son of Maximus and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla, who, typical for a legacy sequel, goes through much of the same journey as his illegitimate father. Lucius begins as a soldier, finds himself enslaved and forced into combat to entertain the masses, and ultimately uses his role as a gladiator to usurp the corrupt and decadent figurehead of the Roman Empire. This is a your standard Hollywood sequel, after all, so everything’s predictably copied from its predecessor and amplified to appear more expensive-looking and thematically weightier. This time, our hero has two emperors, twins no less, to unseat. The Colosseum spectacle is bigger and flashier. The performances are broader. Everything moviegoers might want from a sword and sandals epic has been superbly directed by Scott. But, […]

The post Gladiator II appeared first on Deep Focus Review.

A Quiet Place: Day One

Brian Eggert — Thu, 27 Jun 2024 18:13:41 +0000

A Quiet Place: Day One spins off from the 2018 and 2021 installments of the alien-invasion franchise, co-written and directed by John Krasinski. Still serving as a producer and earning “story by” credit, Krasinski turns over the reins to Michael Sarnoski, whose debut feature, Pig, an indie starring Nicolas Cage as a truffle-hunting former chef, was one of the best films of 2021. Though, it was hardly a spectacle that would suggest Sarnoski could handle a large-scale production. Nevertheless, many successful independent filmmakers today prove their salt with a smaller production only to graduate to a Hollywood tentpole. Sarnoski rises (or lowers, depending on your perspective) to the task, adhering to the aesthetic template established by Krasinski. Like the earlier entries, Day One is an efficient B-movie setup that runs 99 minutes and boasts suspense in droves, all on a reasonable budget—$67 million, which, though cheap by today’s summer movie standards, surpasses A Quiet Place’s price tag by more than three times. Fortunately, Day One never feels like an empty cash grab to exploit intellectual property. It might even be the best entry in the series. The spinoff sets aside the Abbott family and their upstate farm to consider the […]

The post A Quiet Place: Day One appeared first on Deep Focus Review.