Quentin Tarantino's unrequited love for 60s era spaghetti westerns is again on full bloody display in The Hateful Eight. It is a gruesomely violent, garrulous, and protracted homage to a style of filmmaking the director fervently adores. Shot in 70mm with an overture, intermission, and score by the legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone; The Hateful Eight clocks in at a staggering three hours and seven minutes. The film is an ugly, yet fascinating discourse on race relations and loyalty.
Read moreThe Revenant Movie Review
Years from now when people look back at “The Revenant,” one thing is really going to stand out – the brutality of this film. This movie depicts both man and nature at their worst and it absolutely glues you to the screen. The movie is part survival story, part revenge tale and it depicts both unflinchingly.
Read moreHow Star Wars has Influenced Modern Computer Science
In honor of the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens this Thursday, December 17th, the New Jersey Institute of Technology computer science program wanted to commemorate the event with a video that looked at how Star Wars and other bedrocks of the science fiction canon influenced and predicted the future of computer science.
Read moreStar Wars The Force Awakens Movie Review (Spoiler-free)
The movie's good. Damn good, actually. Besides one noticeable throwaway mention early in the movie there's almost nothing from the prequels on display. It's clear as crystal this is a course correction and a direct continuation from the original trilogy. Nothing negates the prequels, mind you, so prequel fans don't need to get immediately defensive. No, it's just that the focus is squarely on capturing the OT tone, sense of fun and adventure and continuing THAT story.
Read moreCREED Movie Review: A Love Letter
When we first meet Adonis Johnson in 1998, he’s serving time in juvenile detention. He is coiled rage, ready to strike, fists gripped tight. No one can get through to him – at least, until Mary Anne Creed (a returning Phylicia Rashad) comes into his cell and drops a bit of familial truth on him. Adonis’s fists slowly unclench, and his eyes grow wide. “What was his name?” he asks, and we smash cut to the title. At that point, Ryan Coogler’s CREED owned me.
Read moreAces' Guilty Pleasures: Starship Troopers
The moment when you discover what Starship Troopers is really about is one of the great eureka moments in the life of any young movie dork. I’ve got vivid memories of sneaking into and staggering out of a suburban multiplex in 1997 and sputtering, “What the fuck was that?” To my young self, it was basically Saved by the Bell plus giant alien bugs cutting people in half. And since I liked the spectacle of giant-monster-related carnage, I wasn’t even mad. I was just confounded. Like: Why were all the human characters so stupid? Could it be possible that a movie so big and expensive could also be so blindingly, knowingly dumb? And how is someone going to make a grand-scale blockbuster with Doogie Howser, MD as the most famous person in the cast. (Neil Patrick Harris was still unequivocally Doogie at that point; he would remain Doogie until the first Harold and Kumar flick. Look, 1997 was a long time ago.) And when a friend’s mom told me, years later, that the movie was really about fascism and militarism, I absolutely thought that person was full of shit (sorry Ms Spurlin). But that’s exactly what it is. Starship Troopers may be the greatest joke ever played on the American movie going public.
Read moreAsh vs Evil Dead: Return of the King
THE KING IS BACK BABY! The first episode alone is an incredibly intoxicating short film from a master storyteller. It builds with a rush of fire, delivering scene after scene in a tsunami-like punch of sure-to-be iconic images that fall right into place with the first three films in this legendary horror franchise. It delivers exactly what fans have wanted and waited for these past thirty years. And it does so at a hectic trot that never slows down. The episode comes to its crescendo with an action packed encore that is better than anything I’ve seen on premium cable this year (though the white walker invasion scene in the new Game Of Thrones series is up there).
Read moreGoosebumps Movie Review
In today's day and age, there are films, like the new Fantastic Four, that people seemingly want to be bad. Though, in their defense, that film was bad. Like holy hell that was bad. Then there are films, like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, that want to be good, but are still no better than before. Goosebumps, however, is one of those rare films that looks bad based on all empirical evidence that I’ve seen, but is actually quite enjoyable… for the most part.
Read more