First, the good news: 2015 was a fantastic year at the movies. There were great original stories, sequels done right, adaptations that match their source material, and more. But for every great movie, there are a ton of bad ones too. For those of you with short memories, 2015 was also when we watched Ed Helms (The Office, The Hangover) bathe in raw sewage, the Entourage crew prove their alpha-douche toxicity could not be contained to the small screen, and a recent Oscar winner giving such an over the top, hammy performance while at the same time wearing such a sparkly costume, that I reckon he’s been taking wardrobe inspiration from Jareth the Goblin King (if you haven’t seen Labyrinth, you really should).
Read moreThe 15 Best Films of 2015
I'm often able to squeeze in a dozen or more films in the last couple weeks of December - mostly stuff that others have told me is worth checking out that I either missed when it came out in Chicago or titles that simply never came out locally. I hope you dig the list and that it gives you some ideas for purchases, streaming, rentals, and most importantly, going to the theater and checking them out on the big screen (a few of these are still in theaters). I saw a lot of good movies this year, so condensing this to 15 was not easy...
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 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...
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