Josh Board

Josh Board is a member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and has been reviewing movies since 1990.

Recent Articles

  • A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

    This movie has a lot of things going against it. First, we just had that terrific documentary about Mr. Rogers (Won’t You Be My Neighbor?) last year. Second, this movie is only 25% Mr. Rogers, it’s 75% about the Esquire journalist doing a story [I’m guessing at this point, Fred Rogers would hold up a pie chart to teach kids about percentages]. Third, as much as we all love Tom Hanks, he doesn’t look or sound like Mr. Rogers. I […]

  • Doctor Sleep — A Review and a Fight in the Theatre

    I missed the press screening of this movie, and figured I wouldn’t see it. Yet before the screening of another movie last week, three critics I respect (Kevin Finnerty, James Jay Edwards, and Rhonda ‘Ro’ Moore) were all saying they liked it. That was good enough for me. Now, before another movie, my wife and I snuck in and saw 30 minutes of it. A young actor we love (Jacob Tremblay of Good Boys, Wonder, and Room), was kidnapped, tortured, […]

  • The Irishman

    As a movie lover, there are Martin Scorsese films that are on my all time list. The first two movie posters I ever framed and put in my office were Some Like it Hot and Taxi Driver. I routinely got into arguments with people at parties when I said Goodfellas was a better mob movie than The Godfather. Yet I was so disappointed by The Departed, and the movies he’s released since. The Wolf of Wall Street was okay, but […]

  • The Good Liar

    I was so excited about this film. The trailer was so handsomely put together, and con movies are right in my wheelhouse. My favorite movies of all time include The Sting, House of Games (David Mamet), and Criminal (John C. Reilly). Yet as fun as con movies are, it’s hard to make them great. Mamet’s Spanish Prisoner was a tad disappointing. Soderbergh (who was heavily involved in Criminal) didn’t impress me with his Ocean’s movies. And don’t even get me […]

  • Ford v Ferrari

    Everyone is raving about the performances of Matt Damon (he has a nice Texas accent going) and Christian Bale (he has his usual facial and vocal tics going). They were good, but my two favorite performances were Tracy Letts (as Henry Ford II) and Jon Bernthal (as Lee Iacocca, in a part that was a bit underwritten). In 1966, British mechanic and racer Ken Miles (Bale) was hired by Carroll Shelby (Damon), to design a car for Ford that would […]

  • Last Christmas

    I’m a Jewish guy that loves Christmas. I send out Christmas cards. I love all the decorations and lights everyone puts up (as long as it’s not before Thanksgiving). I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas songs (Lennon and McCartney gave us two of the worst), and I hate to admit — I always had a soft spot for the Wham! song Last Christmas.  I hate to admit that I even like some bad Christmas movies, just because they put […]

  • Frankie

    I’m guessing that 75% of the French films I see are awful. This movie gets the award this year for having the best cast…in the worst movie. Director Ira Sachs does character studies (Love is Strange and Little Men are the only two I can recommend), and he took his cast to the lovely villas and palaces of Sintra, Portugal. Perhaps he felt because of the picturesque surroundings, he didn’t need a script. So, you just have a bunch of […]

  • Terminator: Dark Fate

    Since I’m writing this review on Halloween, I’ll compare it to the last Halloween movie. That horror film acted as if it was a sequel to the original, and it just conveniently forgot about all the other crappy sequels that followed the original. This movie is acting like Terminator Genisys never happened. So they play by the Terminator mythology that way, yet…at some point, they also disregard it. For this version, we go south of the border, because…if there’s one […]

  • Jojo Rabbit — Review and Chat With the Cast

    I was bothered by this title, just because I’ve been talking about this movie for about a year. That’s because I think New Zealand writer/director Taika Waititi is a comedic genius. Two years in a row, his movies made it into my Top 5 for the year (Hunt for the Wilderpeople and What We Do In The Shadows). I thought he tried a little too hard with the humor in Thor: Ragnarok, though.  Anyway, while talking about my anticipation of […]

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