Movie Review: Pokémon – The First Movie

There are some monsters you just don’t mess with.

Take Mewtwo, for instance, who is spoken to be the most powerful of all of the diverse species of creatures known as Pokémon. Mewtwo is brought into the world as an artificial being, a clone of an especially rare species known as Mew. This clone, an “animal” with superhuman intelligence and devastating psychic abilities, begins its life by questioning that life’s purpose–and then by destroying the lab that created it.

Pokémon is not a franchise I immediately associate with mass destruction and existential crises (neither of which I consider especially appropriate for children, despite this movie’s rating), but both are on display in the series’ first feature film. This movie is well aware of what it wants to accomplish, and even as it doesn’t always know how to reach that goal, it’s a fun film with plenty of exciting moments.

Movie Review: Premium Rush

A movie that fulfills its title in every way, Premium Rush is a quickly paced, thrill-a-minute New York trip in which bike messengers frantically evade pedestrians, vehicles, and the occasional cop. The delivery boys and girls and the police are sometimes (not always) just doing their jobs, but both sides’ actions have powerful consequences for themselves and others. Even though this film has some major content issues and too many ends-and-means questions to count, this is a ride well worth seeing to the end.