Category Archives: Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Horror, Indie Films, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Green Room (2016) Movie Review

April 24, 2016 Alex Brannan

In Green Room, a group of young and conceited punk rockers travel to one last unscheduled gig after their tour bottoms out. The White Supremacist punk scene of the club proves to be more shady than it first appears. The mosh pit is slowed to a balletic chaos as they perform. The atmosphere of the audience is unforgiving. And the green room backstage is an environment of violent undoing.

The film, like the music it portrays, is unrefined, but it is a purposefully stylized unrefined. The low key lighting and grimy aesthetic is what has become “torture porn chic.”

What writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, whose 2013 microbudget indie thriller Blue Ruin received critical success, does differently than torture porn is deliver a Continue reading Green Room (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review

April 4, 2016 Alex Brannan

The first person POV film Hardcore Henry follows the eponymous character (here, the camera is a character) after an unexplained accident renders him maimed. Given cybernetic enhancements to essentially his entire body in a series of jump cuts, Henry must fight to save the wife (Haley Bennett) he doesn’t remember from the corporation that provided the parts that built him.

For the most part, it is your basic action movie plot: the untethered yet reluctant hero, the damsel in distress, the rugged in-the-know guru (or about a dozen of them), and the clearly immoral villain.

The gimmick, then, is the cinematographic choices. The real question, then, is: Is this a gimmick film? Continue reading Hardcore Henry (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review

April 1, 2016 Alex Brannan

In Eye in the Sky, a joint security task force between the UK, the U.S., and Kenya plan a combined drone and ground strike on a meeting of high-level Al-Shabaab terrorists in Nairobi. When the operation starts breaking down, the scenario boils down to a political debate over whether or not to utilize a drone strike to take down the targets.

The film attempts topical commentary inside the drama-thriller framework it is working with. What works most readily is Continue reading Eye in the Sky (2016) Movie Review →

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

Meet the Blacks (2016) Movie Review

March 31, 2016 Alex Brannan

When deciding what movie to see at the theaters Thursday night, I compared new releases on Google Trends. Of the new releases this weekend, Eye in the Sky stole the show in terms of search traffic proportions, God is Not Dead 2 had meager traffic, and Meet the Blacks was a goose egg across the board. Seemingly off the map of Google searches, I was intrigued, and decided to table Eye in the Sky for my Friday matinee. The question is, then, was it a worthwhile choice?

Meet the Blacks is a horror comedy spoof a la Scary Movie following the Black family as they move into their new lavish home in Beverly Hills. And, of course, they also have to deal with Continue reading Meet the Blacks (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Leave it, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Movie Review

March 28, 2016 Alex Brannan

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice begins in medias res of The Man Steel climax, showing in this case the perspective of Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne. As he runs headfirst into the rubble of a crushed Wayne Enterprises building, he has a number of save the cat moments. This, despite the later scenes in which he brands criminals with the bat-symbol, which pretty much nullifies this initial scene.

18 months later, an alien artifact from the battle of Metropolis washes up on shore somewhere in the Indian Ocean and Lois Lane (Amy Adams) is working with the CIA to catch a suspected terrorist. As Superman (Henry Cavill) flies in to save Lois, he is Continue reading Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Horror, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Love It

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Movie Review

March 11, 2016 Alex Brannan

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), in the process of leaving her boyfriend, suddenly becomes party to a car wreck. She awakens in a concrete room chained to the wall. An effectively desperate Winstead struggles just to reach her phone in a tense scene that culminates in the menacing introduction of Michelle’s captor Howard (John Goodman).

This early standoff between Winstead and Goodman is fascinating, although it would have played better with Continue reading 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Indie Films, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words), Romance

Tell Me Sweet Something (2015) Movie Review

March 4, 2016 Alex Brannan

Tell Me Sweet Something follows young author Moratiwa (Nomzamo Mbatha) through the trials of artistry and romance.

Mbatha holds down the fort at the head of the film well. Her character the most well-rounded of the lot, she is given a lot more to work with. But, all the same, she embodies the character well.

Fulfilling the obligatory role of comedic relief male sidekick is Thomas Gumede as Gordon. Albeit a tired character, Continue reading Tell Me Sweet Something (2015) Movie Review →

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

The Witch (2016) Movie Review

February 18, 2016 Alex Brannan

The Witch follows the trials of a 17th century New England family banished from society to a home on the outskirts of a threatening woods. They struggle to survive: the crops die, the hunting traps bear no food, the chicken’s eggs bear stillborn chicks. But what is to blame for the family’s misfortune? For the Puritanical family, their misfortune becomes a hysteria over religious heathenism.

The film is marked by quiet. At the film’s outset, we get a flurry of Continue reading The Witch (2016) Movie Review →

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

Zoolander 2 (2016) Movie Review

February 12, 2016 Alex Brannan

Sequels can be many things. They can be good…sometimes. Or they can be superficial rehashes. Or they can be pure nostalgia pieces. Or they can be re-imaginings with topical insertions to try and bring an old property into the present day, where these insertions take the place of original comedy.

Zoolander 2 falls mostly into the latter category. Justin Beiber, Uber, and Susan Boyle are featured in early gags, in moments meant to hook the viewer in. These “topical” moments (Susan Boyle = topical?) feel Continue reading Zoolander 2 (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It, Long Reviews (>400 Words)

Hail Caesar! (2016) Movie Review

February 5, 2016 Alex Brannan

In Hail Caesar!, the latest from the Coen Brothers, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is an actor during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He is introduced on-screen in a meta framing—a screening within a screening—portraying a Roman leader in a historical epic a la Spartacus. During filming of this movie, Whitlock is drugged and kidnapped.

Hail Caesar! is the Coen Brothers’ love letter to classical Hollywood cinema. The standard genres of the period are represented: Westerns, historical epics, Broadway musical adaptations, bourgeois romance, etc.

The structural issue of this love letter is that Continue reading Hail Caesar! (2016) Movie Review →

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