A lot of times when you try to revisit a beloved film from the past, the end result simply doesn’t live up to the memory and nostalgia you had for the original. The recent Indiana Jones and Star Wars prequels immediately come to mind. Yet, Mad Max: Fury Road not only lives up to the previous films, hell, you could make the case that it surpasses them. It also perfectly stands well on its own as an action classic. From the opening minute of the movie, the action starts full throttle and rarely eases up until the credits roll. It sets the bar extremely high for action movies and will inevitably be compared to other films for the next couple of decades. It’s a film that will not only make Mad Max fans happy, but will recruit legions of new fans who weren’t even born when the originals hit the big screen, or even knew about them.
Read more'It Follows' Film Review
It Follows – from writer/director David Robert Mitchell (The Myth of the American Sleepover) – arrives riding a wave of buzz from various festival showings and a strong box office turnout during its limited release. It will almost certainly go down as one of the creepier, stylish, and overall better offerings from the horror genre realized in 2015 (despite some faults) – and it shows that Mitchell belongs next to Adam Wingard (You’re Next), on the list of talented indie film storytellers lending their skills to the genre today...
Read more'Chappie' Movie Review
I know it’s folly to complain about new stories just because they owe their existence to old ones, but sometimes when a film pays constant homage to other movies, it only leads to unwanted distraction. Case in point: a film like Chappie, which so eerily evokes our collective and vivid memories of Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2 and sometimes Robocop, that Neill Blomkamp’s latest sci-fi spectacular plays a little bit more like a retro mash-up than a fresh and exciting melody. But hey, at least Die Antwoord mixed it.
Read moreGotham: A Serious Review, On A Not So Serious Show
A show that has had many problems during its inaugural season, most of which revolve around its own refusal to give characters, other than the Penguin, anything resembling compelling storylines. "The Blind Fortune Teller" has a unique solution to this — make all the storylines so dumb you can't believe they're happening. It's compelling like a car wreck is compelling, and even as I marveled at how terrible the episode was, I literally had a smile on my face as I sat and watched the insanity unfold.
Read moreBetter Call Saul: Building the Case for a Spinoff
With the world now being a few days removed from the Better Call Saul premiere, and me wanting to do an article on something other than a movie, I decided on a review of the two debut episodes and an analysis on where this show might be going. What were we expecting? It would have been wise to anticipate little, given that the series is “the first spin off of what could be considered the golden centerpiece of premium cable shows.” Bob Odenkirk, the series’ star, called it “an origin story, a superhero story. Saul has a new name and a costume—the hair, the suit.” His character, Saul Goodman, Walter White’s endearingly sleazy lawyer on “Breaking Bad,” was born James McGill, and that’s who this prequel would give us: Jimmy, on his way to becoming Saul.
Read more'Project Almanac' Movie Review
In layman's terms, Project Almanac is nothing more than a dumbed down version of Primer, but marketed for the Cloverfield crowd. It’s sort of fun, but undeniably flawed - the film has an intriguing time-travel premise that it commits to for over half the movie’s run time before just flat out giving up on it. You get the sense that trying to maintain the twisting timeline was just too exhausting, and the creative team of Platinum Dunes (Michael Bay’s company) pretty much assumed its core audience that showed wouldn’t sweat the details and just decided, "lets show more concert footage of these kids partying". Almanac basically pretends to be intelligent long enough to get my hopes up, then reveals its true colors as a superficial, silly genre rip-off aimed at teens...
Read moreThe Worst and Most Disappointing Films of 2014
2014 was a great year for cinema, but needless to say there were more than its fair share of duds. Some movies that didn’t live up to expectations, and some that just leave you wondering what studio agreed to sign off on this? With a list like this, it's hard to not come off as an Internet troll, so I’ve tried my darnedest to at least highlight one or two things about some of the movies that they got right, however brief that may be. Assembling this list might be considered a labor of hate, but I like to think of it as a community service: Think of it as a handy guide to the films you shouldn’t catch up with on VOD.
Read moreTop 16 Movies of 2014
This has been a good year for film in my eyes. We’ve been privy to what I believe was a nice array of storytelling from a major variety of different filmmakers. Now there may not have been too many movies that I flat-out loved this year (if I did this would’ve been a way longer list), but there were plenty that I liked a whole lot and deserved to at least be mentioned for attempting to take a tired premise and revamp it into a refresher on its particular genre. And it was also a swell year for studio tentpole pictures as there were a handful of filmmakers that found ways to turn multi-million dollar corporate investments into somewhat personal and slightly subversive pieces of entertainment. My own Top 16 list runs the gamut from big studio films to very small, contained dramas. If your favorite film wasn’t found on this list, there might be a chance I didn’t get around to seeing it. But if I did, let me reiterate that this is only my opinion, and if there was a favorite of yours that I may have overlooked, please post in the comment section below. I would love to hear what your top 10, 16, heck 35 movies of the year were.
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