Travis Hopson

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Review: 'One Of Them Days'

Jan 16, 2025 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love Friday, the 1995 “one day in the ‘hood” comedy that made Ice Cube and Chris Tucker pot-smokin’ legends? Hell no, and everybody says they want comedies to be as good as Friday. Heck, even the Friday sequels couldn’t measure up. Not to say that One of Them Days is on that level, either, but Keke Palmer and SZA are the closest thing to Craig and Smokey that we’ve seen in a long time.
Review: 'Wolf Man'

Jan 15, 2025 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

The Universal Monsters will never die. We know this to be true, because Universal has been making movies with Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster, Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon literally for over one hundred years, and they’ve endured some pretty bad sequels, remakes, reimaginings, and the like.
Review: 'Hard Truths'

Jan 11, 2025 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

I hated Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s insufferable character Pansy in the first five minutes of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. That’s okay. He wants us to hate her. But he also wants us to wonder about her and what it is that drives her to be so miserable, a plague on anything good and decent, the human embodiment of doom scrolling. Leigh’s films often focus on singularly annoying figures who practically exist in a world outside of our own. Think Sally Hawkins’ eternally cheerful Poppy in Happy-Go-Lucky.
Review: 'Disfluency'

Jan 10, 2025 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

Disfluency. It’s not a word you hear in everyday conversation. It’s the interruption, the disruption in the flow of a person’s speech. Anna Baumgarten couldn’t have chosen a better title for her confident coming-of-age drama, a powerful film about trauma and how it disrupts the flow of everyday life, and makes it hard to communicate our true feelings to the people we love.
Review: 'The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim'

Dec 11, 2024 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

Set around 200 years prior to events seen in Peter Jackson’s live-action Middle-Earth trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim should be a treat for the many Tolkien fanatics who feel Amazon’s The Rings of Power just isn’t enough. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama with a heavy anime influence, this shouldn’t be seen as some kiddie version of the brutal battles of good and evil we’ve grown accustomed to.
Review: 'September 5'

Dec 10, 2024 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

We’re so accustomed to the 24-hour news cycle and the instant delivery of breaking news that it’s tough to remember a time before it could be delivered so seamlessly to millions of people sitting in front of their living room TV sets.
Chris Evans Returning To Marvel For 'Avengers: Doomsday'

Dec 10, 2024 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

Chris Evans isn’t done with the MCU just yet. TheWrap is reporting that he has joined the cast of Avengers: Doomsday. Evans last appeared for Marvel in Deadpool & Wolverine, but not as Captain America Steve Rogers, but as his former role of Johnny Storm aka the Human Torch. It’s unclear what Evans will be doing in Avengers: Doomsday. The last time we saw Steve Rogers it was in Avengers: Endgame as he passed the shield to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson.
Review: 'The Order'

Dec 6, 2024 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

I don’t know if anybody is making better true-crime movies right now than Justin Kurzel. The director has killed it in this genre multiple times, including Snowtown, True History of the Kelly Gang, and Nitram, but his best might just be the gripping thriller The Order. Based on the real-life white supremacist group known as The Order that terrorized the Pacific Northwest in the early 1980s, the film offers roles for Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, and Tye Sheridan that cuts against the grain for them.
Review: 'Werewolves'

Dec 5, 2024 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

If 90 minutes of Frank Grillo fighting his way through bloodthirsty lycans sounds like a good time, then Werewolves is definitely for you. An action-packed blast of blood, fangs, and fury, the film is right in the wheelhouse of director Steven C. Miller, and paired up with Grillo who brings a wealth of similar experience, they deliver one of the best werewolf movies since the Underworld franchise.
Review: 'Unstoppable'

Dec 4, 2024 | punchdrunkcritics.com | Travis Hopson

There’s a reason why underdog sports dramas are such consistent, bankable favorites. When done right, they leave an audience feeling uplifted and spiritually fulfilled, and like they too can do anything they put their mind and body to. We don’t mind and in some cases even want the cliches that come with them, as long as they aren’t overwhelmed with them.