The Movie Paradise

I have to preface this by saying that what I am going to announce is ultimately very good news, and I am incredibly excited by the prospects of the future of The Movie Paradise. However, this is very hard for me to write, as it is the end of an era of my life that has been so transformative and important to me for many years. I am writing now to announce the end of themovieparadise.com, as I will be moving over to YouTube full time. In the past, I have tried to maintain my written site while also venturing into YouTube. However, I now realize that the next step for me to take as a film pundit is to move to YouTube full time. It has not been an easy decision to make, as it would mean leaving behind all the work I have done on themovieparadise.com, and I haven't been ready to completely give that up. Well, now I am. I am at a point now where I feel comfortable leaving behind my blog to start something new. 
I began The Movie Paradise in 2014, and I celebrated my four year anniversa…

Run Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Rating: R Directed by: Bo Burnham Starring: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson 
For most people, eighth grade and, in turn, all of middle school, is one of the worst periods of time in a person's life. So naturally, writer/director Bo Burnham thought it would be a perfect subject to base a movie around! When I first heard of Eighth Grade, I was intrigued by the premise. Usually when we see movies about kids trying to grapple with who they are and dealing with societal pressures, the films are centered around high school. But middle school is actually worse than high school, and we don't see too many movies accurately capturing the middle school experience. So I went into Eighth Grade really interested to see what Burnham would give us. I didn't see the trailer beforehand and I didn't know anything about the plot; I only knew it focused on a girl named Kayla (Elsie Fisher, Despicable Me) who was in her final days middle school. And …

Run Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Rating: R Directed by: Carlos López Estrada  Starring: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar 
I didn't really know much about Blindspotting before I went to go see it. I had seen the trailer a couple of times, but I didn't have the strongest sense of what the film was actually about. I went and saw Blindspotting as part of my new initiative to see a new movie in theaters every Saturday morning. It gives me an excuse to go see movies that aren't the big blockbusters that I've been looking forward to for months and months, and Blindspotting certainly fits that bill. It centers around two friends, Collin (Daveed Diggs) and Miles (Rafael Casal), who reach a bit of a crossroads as Collin is finishing up his probation and begins to reassess whether Miles is really a healthy person to keep in his life going forward. Blindspotting does a really great job in balancing comedy and drama, as it tells the story of these characters while also hintin…

Run Time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Rating: PG-13 Directed by: Sylvian White  Starring: Joey King, Julia Goldani Telles, Jaz Sinclair 
Dear God, what did I get myself into? I never used to say I was a fan of the horror movie genre. I had seen so many shitty horror movies--loaded with terrible characters, awful performances, and lazy jump scares--that I was left rather cynical about the genre as a whole. Whether that was fair or unfair of me is up for debate, but that's how I felt. However, as I went back and began watching classic horror movies, such as The Thing, Halloween, Psycho, The Exorcist, Carrie, Rosemary's Baby, etc., I realized that I was actually a fan of horror movies; just not modern horror films. And then modern horror movies began to take a turn. We got films like The Babadook, It Follows, Lights Out, Don't Breathe, It, and others that us showed just what modern horror movies can be like. That there is light at the end of the tunnel! And then I went and saw Slender …