Is 2023 the year Cillian Murphy finally gets an Oscar nomination? It certainly looks like he has the material in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”. Written and directed by Nolan, the film is his first since breaking away from Warner Brothers. It features a jam-packed cast that includes Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Kenneth Branagh, and Josh Hartnett among others. That alone makes for an highly anticipated feature, but it’s the brand new trailer that really gets me excited.

The film sees Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, a theoretical physicist whose role in the Manhattan Project earned him the title of “father of the atomic bomb”. The glimpses we get are of a conflicted man caught in what he feels is a no-win situation. The set and costume design looks spot-on, and you can already get a sense from the trailer than Nolan has done a ton of research. So we have a fascinating historical figure and a noted filmmaker with an incredible cinematic prowess. We might be in for something special.

“Oppenheimer” releases exclusively in theaters on July 21, 2023. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

Boy the 2023 movie year just gets more and more stacked. The latest movie instantly added to my must-watch list is the Sam Raimi produced “65”. The early teases were intriguing, but the new trailer completely won me over. Written and directed by the duo of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, “65” is a genre-bending science-fiction action-thriller with Adam Driver as its lead. That alone was enough to sell me.

But then I saw the new trailer, and the movie quickly climbed higher on my list. Driver plays a pilot who crash-lands on an unknown planet. As he explores the area he discovers a single lone survivor (Ariana Greenblatt). But the planet is also has its share dangers, and they’re of the prehistoric variety of you get what I mean. That’s quite the formula, and the trailer shows off the kind of production value that could make it a lot of fun. I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

“65” arrives in theaters on March 10, 2023. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

I never quite got onboard with fervent adoration for “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”. I enjoyed the family elements of the story and wish there had been more of it. And I enjoyed most of the animation up until the final act. But the movie never found a good balance. Sometimes it felt like a moving family story with the inescapable superhero baggage attached. Other times it was like watching someone else play a video game. The new trailer for the much-anticipated sequel looks very much the same.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” teases several of the things I liked about its predecessor while also showing several of the things I didn’t. The early family bits look great and the animation really shines in those clips. But when it amps things up, the sensory blasts of colors and hyper-stylized visuals overwhelm. Add to it my growing boredom for the current multi-verse fad that’s everywhere these days, and I’m just not sure this is for me. But I’ll still see it and hope that (like the first film) there’s enough of the good stuff to get by.

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” hits theaters June 2, 2003. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

I had a great time once again appearing on Tavern Talk by Initial Reaction. This time I joined host Philip Price to discuss Sam Mendes’ ambitious but overstuffed drama “Empire of Light” which is out now in select theaters. As always, we had a blast talking about the movie and breaking down its strengths and weaknesses. Don’t worry, this is a spoiler-free review so please click below and give it a watch.

I’m a little late getting to this, but last week Marvel Studios dropped the first trailer for the upcoming third installment in their “The Guardians of the Galaxy” branch of the MCU. I’ve enjoyed the “Guardians” films, but I’ve never considered them top-tier MCU. The films are full of fun characters, but the hit-and-miss goofiness along with some pretty bland villains have held them back. Still, director James Gunn finds ways to make things entertaining.

His third chapter sees the Guardians at a pretty low point. It’s especially true for Peter (Chris Pratt) who’s still struggling with the loss of his Gamora. But this is a James Gunn movie so you know things aren’t going to stay somber for very long. In fact we get several good laughs in the trailer that fit nicely with the goofy tone of the previous films. But we also get glimpses that make us wonder if we’re in for some heartbreak. Time will tell. I’m pretty interested in seeing where this third (and possibly final) “Guardians” movie goes.

“The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” opens May 5, 2023. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.

Very little in the realm of movies could excite me more than this – “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”. 2023 was already stacking up to be a stellar year for movie lovers. One of the biggest treats was a new Indiana Jones movie. Most of us had written off any chance of a new installment, especially after the woefully bad “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”. Yet here we are with a fifth Indy film on the way. And it’s once again led by the wonderful 80-year-old Harrison Ford.

As a die-hard fan of the first three films, of course I had concerns. But then I saw the just-released first trailer. Now I’m as giddy as 10-year-old me was back in 1981 as we left the Flick Twin Cinema after seeing “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Everything about this trailer excited me – fabulous familiar faces, some interesting new ones, glorious callbacks, plenty of Indy-styled swashbuckling. It hit every mark it needed to. I love the look of it. And with director James Mangold at the helm, I think the property is in very good hands!

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” hits theaters June 30, 2023. Check out the trailer below and let me know if you’ll be seeing it or taking a pass.