Category Archives: Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) Movie Review

The preamble to Tim Burton’s latest, a fantasy novel adaptation, introduces a multi-faceted allegorical fable that mixes grief, childhood imagination, and Holocaust fears into a hideaway fantasy realm. Miss Peregrine’s (Eva Green) children’s home remains perpetually in September 3, 1943, the day when a German air raid bombed the building out.

miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children-2016-movie-review-tim-burton-asa-butterfield-fantasy-film

Jake (Asa Butterfield), a lonely boy in his own right, travels to find the home (in 2016) following the death of his grandfather (Terence Stamp), a former resident of the home. Through way of the cavernous entrance into a Continue reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016) Movie Review

Goat (2016) Movie Review

Brad (Ben Schnetzer) is a college-student-to-be. His brother Brett (Nick Jonas) already attends the college he is accepted to, and Brett is a member of an elite fraternity on campus as well. Brad, still recovering from a brutal physical assault, is convinced to join the frat, where his ethical patience is severely tested.

goat-movie-review-2016-frat-drama-nick-jonas-james-franco

Goat has an introduction that is evocative of other movies of its ilk. The “wild life” is in full effect, portrayals of Continue reading Goat (2016) Movie Review

The Magnificent Seven (2016) Movie Review

Antoine Fuqua’s reboot of the seminal 1960 Western The Magnificent Seven (itself a Westernization of the 1954 Akira Kurosawa film The Seven Samurai) has a distinctly modern feel to it. Bandits have been replaced by violent capitalists. The fear of the outsider has been replaced by the fear of the wealthy. Of course, there is the fear-of-the-other narrative that introduces Denzel Washington’s Chisolm that screams modern relevancy. It is, however, a commentary only hinted at.

the-magnificent-seven-2016-remake-western-movie-review-chris-pratt

What we get in lieu of commentary is Continue reading The Magnificent Seven (2016) Movie Review

Blair Witch (2016) Movie Review

Blair Witch chronicles the “documentary footage” of a college student and his friends as they search through the mythic Black Hills Forest for his sister Heather Donahue, who disappeared in the woods years earlier.

blair-witch-horror-movie-2016-adam-wingard-movie-review-found-footage

From the onset, Blair Witch follows the beats of its predecessor, the surprise 1999 hit The Blair Witch Project, as if the studio and creative team believed that the audience this film is marketed toward has never seen the original film. This, or they Continue reading Blair Witch (2016) Movie Review

Snowden (2016) Movie Review

A movie by a veteran (yet perhaps out of touch) director starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt depicting a true story that was previously depicted in an acclaimed documentary. Is this The Walk. No, this is Snowden.

Snowden follows the CIA career and subsequent “whistleblowing” of Edward Snowden (Gordon-Levitt), as well as his relationship with Lindsay Mills (Shailene Woodley).

snowden-2016-movie-review-joseph-gordon-levitt

Snowden’s script at times reads more like a civics lesson than a drama. Feeling the need to Continue reading Snowden (2016) Movie Review

The Disappointments Room (2016) Movie Review

The title of The Disappointments Room begs the question: Is The Disappointments Room a disappointment? The short answer: Yes.

The film begins similarly to Haneke’s Funny Games, only without the amazing sound cues. A couple (Kate Beckinsale and Mel Raido) and their young son (Duncan Joiner) move out to the country for a new beginning after a terrible accident. The house, which from certain angles looks more like a castle, is a mess: broken light fixtures, leaking ceilings, junk everywhere. We follow this nuclear family, unassuming and entirely banal, as they fall victim to a strange presence in their home (maybe; it becomes impossible to tell).

the-disappointments-room-2016-movie-review-horror-kate-beckinsale

The Disappointments Room is a film that is utterly basic. It checks all the boxes of a basic horror movie and then Continue reading The Disappointments Room (2016) Movie Review

Sully (2016) Movie Review

Sully is literally marred by explosions. They are the nightmares of the title character—pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks), who successfully landed a crashing plane into the Hudson River in 2009—a streaking jet plane striking into Times Square. These are the volatile internal demons of an outwardly calm man.

sully-movie-review-2016-tom-hanks-clint-eastwood

Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial outing works on two levels of conflict. There is this internal struggle, and there is the closed-door politics of the man’s otherwise heroic actions. The divide between the two, stylistically, is two different movies. It is arguably more effective to Continue reading Sully (2016) Movie Review

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Movie Review

“Lo,” the first message ever sent across the internet. “Lo” as in “Log” without the g, as the computer sending the message crashed before the message could be completed. This is the beautiful irony of the internet that director Werner Herzog tries to capture in his new documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World. The inception of the world wide web was at one point a “revolution” that was about to irrevocably change the course of the modern world, and it is at another point an inception that is as archaic-sounding as a recovered fossil.

lo-and-behold-movie-review-2016-documentary-werner-herzog-internet-culture

Video games that map molecules, cars that drive themselves, online class rosters that academically blow Stanford students out of the water. The internet is a mesmerizing world of possibilities that we all take for granted every day. The problem with this premise is that Continue reading Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Movie Review

31 (2016) Movie Review

Rob Zombie begins his sixth feature film by somewhat breaking the fourth wall with a monologue of almost poetic sadism. Hired killer “Doom-Head” (Richard Brake) spits acid words in closeup, to invigorating effect. This inaugural scene, with its tight closeups and deliberate cadence, is a truly engrossing intro to a horror film.

31-rob-zombie-movie-review-2016-richard-brake-horror-film-carnival

Zombie, who takes much of his horror stylings from the likes of Tobe Hooper, delves deeper into the raw maw of this inspiration’s brutal realism with 31. The backroads Americana. The rambling van of freewheelers. The promise of chainsaws. 31 wants to be Continue reading 31 (2016) Movie Review

Game of Aces (2016) Movie Review

Game of Aces is a period piece that doesn’t suffer from that inescapable stench of the period piece. It isn’t stuffy with the air of a different time and place. Many times, a period piece drama, especially those centered around wartime, will have the distinct feel of a re-enactment: heavy-handed, taking itself too seriously, and yet still somehow superficial. Game of Aces, in spite of its clearly tight budget, gets by on its lighter tone.

game-of-aces-world-war-one-movie-review-chris-klein-victoria-summers

The film begins anachronistic to this idea. “There is no pain,” a downed fighter pilot (Werner Daehn) whispers to himself as he Continue reading Game of Aces (2016) Movie Review