Review – Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Review – Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is one of the most surprising movies of 2016.  I had no idea what to expect when walking into this movie, other than it looked like Tim Burton’s version of X-Men. My assumption of the film was correct, but that isn’t a bad thing.  This is cool, twisty, weird, fun movie and one of Tim Burton’s best films in a long time. When Jacob’s (Asa Butterfield) grandfather passes away, he discovers clues…

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Oscar Predictions – FINAL PREDICTIONS

Oscar Predictions – FINAL PREDICTIONS

With the Oscar nominations being announced Tuesday morning, here are my final Oscar predictions for the 2017 Oscars.   I’m only going to predict the major categories and skip the tech awards for spacial reasons.     BEST PICTURE We have three guarantees in LA LA LAND, MOONLIGHT, and MANCHESTER BY THE SEA.  These are the three front runners and guaranteed nominations.  HIDDEN FIGURES has been making some moves, as has LION, which pulled a surprise DGA nomination.  Some former…

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Review – Deepwater Horizon

Review – Deepwater Horizon

When people ask me to describe a movie to them, I try to condense the overall thought into a sentence or two.  When one of my buddies asked me to describe Peter Berg’s latest film, Deepwater Horizon, it took me a bit to describe the movie because of the emotion and intensity of the film.  But, if I was narrow down Deepwater Horizon to one sentence it would be this: The second VHS of Titanic (1997) with fire. Now,…

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Review – Masterminds

Review – Masterminds

Masterminds is a movie about dumb people doing dumb things.  The ultimately results in a dumb movie.  However, thanks to the incredibly talented cast of great comedians, Masterminds isn’t a true trainwreck.  Stupid?  Absolutely.  Funny?  You’re damn right. Loosely based on a true story, Masterminds is about David Ghantt (Zach Galifianakis), a simple armored car driver who gets duped into stealing of $2 million from a bank, becoming the largest heist in American history. The story is pretty ridiculous,…

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Review – The Girl on the Train

Review – The Girl on the Train

The Girl on the Train was ranked at number ten on my Most Anticipated Movies of 2016.  Based off the extremely popular book, this sounded like it could have been Gone Girl (2014) 2.0. However, as the year went on and the trailers were released, I became worried that the director, Tate Taylor, who did marvelous work on The Help (2011), was not the correct choice to direct the film.  I was still excited to see it because of…

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Review – The Magnificent Seven

Review – The Magnificent Seven

Akira Kurisawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samuari has been remade and retold three times.  The first remake was in 1960 with The Magnificent Seven starring Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson.  The next came in 1999 from Pixar, amazingly, in the form of A Bug’s Life.  Now, we get a remake of a remake in Antoine Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven, which is a wild and fun Western with one of my favorite scenes of 2016. The story is the same: Seven…

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Top 5 – Most Anticipated Movies of the 52nd Chicago International Film Festival

Top 5 – Most Anticipated Movies of the 52nd Chicago International Film Festival

Another year, another festival.  This will be my ninth time attending the Chicago International Film Festival and, like every year, this is going to a unique, diverse year for movies.  I have a loaded schedule of 19 movies, with the possibility of almost 25.  The films are all over the place in terms of genre, from indie, to war, to musicals, to horror.  My brain will probably be fried after the festival, and I am…

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Top 5 – Awesome Movies Coming to Netflix in October

Top 5 – Awesome Movies Coming to Netflix in October

Another month, more Netflix movies.  Here are my picks for the best movies coming to Netflix in October.   The full list of all movies coming to Netflix in October can be found here.     5 – DHEEPAN (Jaques Audiard, 2015) There were a couple other movies coming to Netflix this month that are great, but I felt this movie deserved some recognition.  I saw Dheepan at last year’s Chicago International Film Festival and it is a…

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Most Anticipated Movies – Rest of 2016

Most Anticipated Movies – Rest of 2016

With the second half of 2016 in full swing, it’s time to look at the movies ahead.  This is the time of the year when the summer blockbusters dwindle down and we get into Oscar season, which is my personal favorite time of the movie year.  A lot of exciting movies coming out this fall, with tons of big named actors and directors.  So many, in fact, that I probably could have made a top…

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