The Golden Globes’ biggest honor is actually a split honor. For better or worse, the awards show divides its Best Picture race into two categories: one signifying the highest achievement in “Drama,” and the other in “Musical or Comedy”
This year, both races are fairly cut and dry with some wiggle room for an upset.
Continue reading 2017 Golden Globe Awards Predictions – Best Picture
The Golden Globes were released today, one day after the yet-to-be-nationally-released (read: I haven’t seen it) La La Land won big at the Critics’ Choice Awards, and, as usual, some had to get snubbed.
Here are a brief list of no-shows from this year’s list of film nominees (Sorry, no TV here). Note: I have not seen all of the film’s nominated (and not nominated), so some of these list items might not be so surprising in retrospect. Continue reading Surprising Snubs from the 2017 Golden Globe Nominations
Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain), a take-no-prisoners Washington lobbyist, comes under scrutiny by Congress for potentially illegal dealings. The film opens on a Congressional hearing, then jumps three months back to establish how Sloane ends up in this situation. As the film jumps back and forth between temporal locations, an intricate story of morally gray political competition emerges.
Miss Sloane paces with the snappy dialogue of an Aaron Sorkin drama. It is no wonder that the film sports Continue reading Miss Sloane (2016) Movie Review
Office Christmas Party. No synopsis required.
Except, the film presents itself as if there needs to be a thorough plot for this raucous party comedy. A struggling tech company faces layoffs due to sibling rivalry, the newly divorced CTO (Jason Bateman) is…yadda yadda yadda.
Office Christmas Party is slow to get started. The premise and characters are Continue reading Office Christmas Party (2016) Movie Review
Susan (Amy Adams), an art gallery owner, receives a novel manuscript from her ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal). The twisted work, a thriller involving characters not dissimilar to Susan and Edward, proves to be an added hindrance to Susan’s already strained life, a life of lavish emptiness and a philandering new husband (Armie Hammer). As she progresses through the novel, she begins an introspection into her own life that could prove to change her.
Director Tom Ford, a fashion designer by trade, brings his talents to this film, and his touch becomes clear on the Continue reading Nocturnal Animals (2016) Movie Review
Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) lives a mundane existence as a building handyman. Cold and blunt, he works all day and drinks all night, isolating himself into a bubble. When his brother (Kyle Chandler) dies, Lee is asked to take custody of the man’s son (Lucas Hedges).
Affleck plays Lee bristly, but not icy. In an extended conversation sequence in a hospital following his brother’s death, Lee reacts with Continue reading Manchester by the Sea (2016) Movie Review
Love, time, and death. The three abstractions that connect every human being on Earth, according to ad exec Howard (Will Smith) in a rousing speech to his colleagues. Three years later, Howard returns to work after the death of his six year old daughter. Cue domino tower cascade.
Howard, in his grief, sends letters to ideas: love, time, and death. He has, for all intents and purposes, an eccentric depression. The type of depression that is Continue reading Collateral Beauty (2016) Movie Review
Kevin Smith’s latest feature, the blatantly Canadian-set Yoga Hosers, feels at first like an unofficial Clerks 3 graduated to a new generation to include Instagram, yoga, an attempt at current slang, and a female empowerment angle. Indeed, most characters are introduced through an Instagram insert that adds no information to the character that was not already presented through narrative context.
The film is also a horror movie about bratwurst Nazis. And a musical, kind of. It paints Canada like a fantasy world completely alien to American audiences, so alien that Continue reading Yoga Hosers (2016) Movie Review
The exorcism film. Has it ever lived up to its contemporary creator, The Exorcist? Not really. Yet, here we are four decades later still letting Hollywood churn them out like soap operas.
Incarnate, the latest effort (if we can call it that) from Blumhouse Tilt, takes the possessed child angle to “new heights” by providing our exorcist character Dr. Seth Embers (Aaron Eckhart) with an ability to enter the victim’s subconscious during the exorcism. In short, Incarnate is The Exorcist meets Inception, only without everything that makes those films interesting and different.
The wheelchair-bound Embers is executing exorcisms (or “evictions”) in search for the demon Maggie. Maggie has also been searching for him so that she can cause him interminable pain, only it has taken Embers dozens of exorcisms to find her. Horror movies don’t need logical premises, right?
The reality check with Incarnate is that Continue reading Incarnate (2016) Movie Review
Nothing screams a middle aged man writing a teen-targeted comedy like an extended opening gag involving “Netflix and chill.” The subject of the gag in question, the parents (Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally) of upcoming Stanford grad Stephanie (Zoey Deutch), are about to take a holiday to visit their little girl…and her new boyfriend. Laird Mayhew (James Franco) is a tattoed man-child who stumbled into wealth with an app production outfit, and he wants to marry Ned Fleming’s daughter.
Throughout the setup of Why Him?, every joke is punctuated or predicated on Continue reading Why Him? (2016) Movie Review
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