Category Archives: All Movie Reviews

A Movies, All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Love It

I Am Not Your Negro (2017) Movie Review

February 18, 2017 Alex Brannan

In archive footage, we see at the beginning of I Am Not Your Negro an interview with the subject of the documentary: writer James Baldwin. The interviewer, when addressing with Baldwin the plight of the black man in American during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, he says “Is it at once getting better and still hopeless?” To which Baldwin responds, quite simply, that there is no hope to it.

I Am Not Your Negro is a literary chronicle set to motion through photographs, film clips, and sweeping landscape shots. The raw power of Baldwin’s words is something Continue reading I Am Not Your Negro (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Drama, Leave it

Girlfriend’s Day (2017) Movie Review

February 18, 2017 Alex Brannan

Ray Wentworth (Bob Odenkrik) is a greeting card writer. The best, if you ask him. We first see him looking down the barrel of the camera in closeup, waxing poetic about the poetics of card writing. Writing novels are for hacks who cannot edit themselves. Cards are the real challenge.

Following this, Ray is Continue reading Girlfriend’s Day (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, F Movies, Loath It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Fifty Shades Darker (2017) Movie Review

February 10, 2017 Alex Brannan

Let me get the positives of Fifty Shades Darker out of the way so we can start making jokes. 1) Star lighting showcases our “steamy” talent quite adequately. 2) As with its predecessor, the production design is well-conceived. 3) Academy Award-winner Kim Basinger appears, and should be in a better movie than this.

BDSM is still viewed in this film as a Continue reading Fifty Shades Darker (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Love It

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) Movie Review

February 9, 2017 Alex Brannan

John Wick (Keanu Reeves), essentially the omnipotent god of this film universe whose nickname is appropriately “The Boogeyman,” just wants his car back. That’s all. Is it really so hard to give John Wick his car back? He’s really been through a lot. Cut him some slack.

Once he gets his car back, a movie happens.

John Wick 2 might be one of the Continue reading John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Animation, Love It

The Lego Batman Movie (2017) Movie Review

February 9, 2017 Alex Brannan

“Black. All important movies start with a black screen.” This is the first line of The Lego Batman Movie, the spinoff/sequel of the 2014 surprise hit The Lego Movie. The tongue-in-cheek opening is reminiscent of the opening of a similar late-winter release from last year: Deadpool. The Lego Batman Movie is not Deadpool, for obvious reasons, but the spirit of light comic book mockery is the same.

The Lego Batman Movie utilizes an economy of exposition, relying on prior franchise knowledge and in-jokes to set up Continue reading The Lego Batman Movie (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Horror, Love It

Get Out (2017) Movie Review

February 7, 2017 Alex Brannan

The opening to Get Out, the new thriller from Key & Peele‘s Jordan Peele, plays out in a single, meandering take that is gorgeously composed. The single shot depicts a man (Lakeith Stanfield) being plucked off of a suburban street in the middle of the night.

This cold open pivots to an idyllic, happy young couple, Chris and Rose (Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams), packing for a weekend at Rose’s parents’ house. This retreat to the woods, however, promises to be far more Continue reading Get Out (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Dark Night (2017) Movie Review

February 3, 2017 Alex Brannan

The opening shot of Tim Sutton’s Dark Night, coming after almost a minute of music playing over a black screen, is a beautiful yet unceremoniously conventional shot. It is the reflexive kino eye shot, showing the awareness of artifice and mediation within a filmic representation.

Gorgeous red and blue neon washes over the eye of an onlooker. We can see the approaching police car in her pupil. It is tragedy in a snapshot; fundamentally artistic even if the eyeball shot has appeared everywhere from Un Chien Andalou to LOST.

Dark Night chronicles the lives of those affected by the 2012 Aurora shooting that took place in a Colorado screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. The film is proposed as a Continue reading Dark Night (2017) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Horror, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Rings (2017) Movie Review

February 2, 2017 Alex Brannan

The premise of The Ring has always seemed silly. “You ever hear about the videotape that kills people in seven days?” This is one of the first lines of Rings, this third English-language installment of the franchise, itself a remake of the J-Horror sensation Ringu.

On a plane, two people who watched the tape are killed by Samara, the pallid, greasy black-haired monster of the film, as she climbs out of a monitor in the cockpit. This essentially unrelated cold open is the shoddiest scene in the entire film; a strange way to Continue reading Rings (2017) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Love It

The Handmaiden (2016) Movie Review

January 29, 2017 Alex Brannan

Director Chan-wook Park is not afraid to push buttons. He’s not afraid to be different. Not afraid to indulge.

The Handmaiden may be Chan-wook Park’s most button-pushing, different, indulgent film to date.

In 1930s Korea, a woman named Sook-hee (Tae-ri Kim) is hired to be the handmaiden of a wealthy Japanese heiress Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim). But nothing is what meets the eye. Nothing. Sook-hee is Continue reading The Handmaiden (2016) Movie Review →

A Movies, All Movie Reviews, Documentary, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

Life, Animated (2016) Movie Review

January 26, 2017 Alex Brannan

At the age of three, Owen Suskind “disappears.” He changes: awake all night, speaking in gibberish, a loss of motor function, an inability to understand what people are saying. Diagnosed with autism, Owen’s life changes forever.

But a love for animated movies, particularly those of the Disney Corporation, allows Owen an outlet from which he can Continue reading Life, Animated (2016) Movie Review →

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