Tag Archives: 2016

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

The Man Who Saved Ben-Hur (2016) Movie Review

You won’t find many credits for John Alarimo Jr. on IMDb. But the man was entrenched in the Hollywood system for years. He ate lunch with Gore Vidal, sat on set with Frank Sinatra and Vincent Price, acted alongside Mae West, danced with Stella Adler. Most notably, he acted as a (uncredited) second assistant director on the iconic epic Ben-Hur.

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In The Man Who Saved Ben-Hur, Alarimo’s cousin Joe Forte, now a filmmaker himself, interviews Alarimo about his time in Hollywood. Surprisingly, this interview does not begin with stories of California, but with stories of Continue reading The Man Who Saved Ben-Hur (2016) Movie Review →

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

Bad Moms (2016) Movie Review

Amy Mitchell (Mila Kunis) is always running late. She works at a hipster coffee company. A hipster coffee company with employees that don’t respect her and don’t work as hard as her. She has two children and a child husband. A child husband who cheats on her online with another woman. When Amy gets fed up with the infuriating mundaity of suburban motherhood, she…does things. Most of them involve parental irresponsibility and middle-fingering the dictatorial PTA president (Christina Applegate). Oh, and plenty of slow motion montages.

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Given the premise of this film, I have no real reason to Continue reading Bad Moms (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Like It, Romance

Cafe Society (2016) Movie Review

In 1930s Hollywood, Phil Stern (Steve Carrell) is a high profile film agent. His nephew Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) is a neurotic New Yorker who moves to Los Angeles after becoming tired of life in the Big Apple. The extended family also includes a gangster (Corey Stoll) and a Communist intellectual (Stephen Kunken).

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The film is, in essence, a wandering tale of cinephilia, writer-director Woody Allen exercising his vast knowledge of classic Hollywood whenever possible. It is also a romantic melodrama: Bobby wants a woman named Veronica (Kristen Stewart) who is Continue reading Cafe Society (2016) Movie Review →

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

Nerve (2016) Movie Review

“Nerve” is a game of extreme sports and social media. The “players” film themselves doing a series of dares for money, and the more people watching them, the closer they are to being number one, a position that ironically guarantees nothing other than the empty stardom of fleeting viral attention.

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Venus (Emma Roberts), a born watcher, throws caution to the wind for once in her life by becoming a player in the game. Nerve ropes her into Continue reading Nerve (2016) Movie Review →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Animation, Like It

Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) Movie Review

Batman: The Killing Joke begins with Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl (Tara Strong), stating in voiceover that she understands this isn’t the beginning you were expecting. This is because it’s not. The first frame of the iconic Alan Moore comic is of water thumping onto the pavement in the night, not a shot of the night’s sky. With this opening line, the film is keying the viewer into its extended opening, one that does not appear in the comic.

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This opening has been cause for much controversy; why add to the tight story that is found in Moore’s version? The simple answer is that

Continue reading Batman: The Killing Joke (2016) Movie Review →

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

Captain Fantastic (2016) Movie Review

Ben (Viggo Mortensen) raises his children under a strict survivalist patriarchy in the woods. They wear caked mud as camouflage to stalk and hunt game. They train in knife combat. At night they read books on quantum mechanics and high literature. It is an extreme form of home schooling, in a way, if home was a forest and school taught you how to skin a deer.

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Ben is trying, but he is a loving father. The family’s life appears serene in its isolation and in spite of nature’s harshness, but, like the ever-pressing power of globalization, the outside world Continue reading Captain Fantastic (2016) Movie Review →

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

Jason Bourne (2016) Movie Review

Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) remembers. He remembers everything. He is also doing one of the things that he does most often: hiding. We see him as an underground fighter, ripped and captured in a lot of shots with lens flares.

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Meanwhile, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) is hacking into the CIA to get documents on their covert operations; documents that include information on Bourne and his late father. When Parsons contacts Bourne, he has to Continue reading Jason Bourne (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Indie Films, Love It

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) Movie Review

Young ne’er-do-well Ricky (Julian Dennison) is sent to live with foster parents on a farm in the woods of New Zealand. When the foster mother (Rima Te Wiata) dies (at the end of a brief but wonderful performance), Ricky and his gruff foster father (Sam Neill) must learn to get along, particularly when they are hunted by social services and the police due to a massive miscommunication.

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Taika Waititi’s directing has a comic energy to it; the story a child-like charm. Waititi’s cameo itself is arguably the Continue reading Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Like It, Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Star Trek Beyond (2016) Movie Review

Three years into a five-year mission, the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise make a routine stop at the Yorktown Star Fleet space station. There, Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) is tasked with locating a missing vessel, a mission that ends in an ambush. The villainous Krall (Idris Elba) crashes the Enterprise, stealing away most of the crew and stranding the rest on a nearby planet.

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Star Trek Beyond is a lot of bells and whistles, flashing lights and sweeping camera moves. While this at times yields action-packed returns and visuals that call for oohs and ahs, the spectacle as a whole is Continue reading Star Trek Beyond (2016) Movie Review →

All Movie Reviews, Comedy, Like It

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) Movie Review

After a string of boisterous, and often dangerous, benders at family gatherings, brothers Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) Stangle are asked by their family to bring respectable dates to their sister Jeanie’s (Sugar Lyn Beard) wedding in Hawaii. Who they find, however, may prove to be even more boisterous than the Stangle brothers themselves.

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As is common with most comedy films, Mike and Dave features characters who are Continue reading Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates (2016) Movie Review →