Tag Archives: 2016

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

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 Bandits have been replaced by violent capitalists. The fear of the outsider has been replaced by the fear of the wealthy.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.

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

All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it

The Light Between Oceans (2016) Movie Review

Derek Cianfrance, the director of The Place Beyond the Pines and Blue Valentine, returns with a story that is similarly bleak and heart-wrenching, despite what the title might have you believe. The Light Between Oceans tells the story of a married couple (Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender) who, after multiple attempts, fail to carry a child to term.

Cianfrance brings style to the film, but it does not make up for the pitfalls of narrative and thematic substance. Lighting and framing capture picaresque cinematic moments from the 1920s Australian landscape. The sound design, in certain pivotal scenes, is fantastic. The film appears very much, and very adeptly, like a film.

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Fassbender and Vikander come together to make up the tragic couple. They are the film’s driving force, and they are both wonderful. Rachel Weiss, in addition, is absolutely riveting in a criminally small supporting role.

The issue with The Light Between Oceans is Continue reading The Light Between Oceans (2016) Movie Review →

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

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.

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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 →

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

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).

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

Film Philosophy / Editorials, Horror

The Blair Witch Effect, Reboot Culture, and the Question of Quality Horror

A few months back I wrote an article pertaining to the cliches of the horror genre and how these cliches could possibly be subverted in order to make a refreshingly unique horror film. It was something I wrote on a whim while thinking about screenwriting, and it is more light in an attempt to be humorous than it is indicting or inquisitive.

With the upcoming release of The Blair Witch Project reboot, I find it pertinent to revisit the classic horror film and how its innovation was at the same time historic and sadly prophetic.

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1999’s The Blair Witch Project has, since its inception, been the origin of a deeply passionate debate. The question is simple: Is the film Continue reading The Blair Witch Effect, Reboot Culture, and the Question of Quality Horror →

2017 Academy Awards, Award Ceremonies, Movie News

2017 Oscar Movie Season Preview

The first weekend of September 2016 has brought us two major disappointments (The Disappointments Room and When the Bough Breaks) and one movie with some early Oscar buzz. Clint Eastwood’s biopic Sully is earning attention, particularly for Tom Hanks’ usual strong performance. With Summer behind us and the mediocre lot of September ahead, I feel the need to look a few months down the line at some movies that promise to be some of the best of the year.

Oscar-nominated movies can come around at any time during the calendar year. We will more than likely see Continue reading 2017 Oscar Movie Season Preview →

Action/Thriller, All Movie Reviews, Drama, Leave it

When the Bough Breaks (2016) Movie Review

A happily married couple (Regina Hall and Morris Chestnut) are looking for a surrogate to carry their child. The young woman they choose (Jaz Sinclair) is sweet, kind-eyed, and 100% on-board. However, she is looking for more than a simple payment.

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As simple as the tactics used are, the film takes its time to establish sympathy for the relationship of our protagonists, and it does this well. You’d be surprised how Continue reading When the Bough Breaks (2016) Movie Review →

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

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).

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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 →

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

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.

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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 →

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

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.

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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 →