Movie Reviews

Here’s the deal with boxing movies; you know exactly how it is going to end.  Regardless of the story, the film will always end with a climactic fight where the main fighter will give it his all and either win or lose.  There are a couple exceptions to this, mainly Raging Bull (1980) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), but almost every other boxing film, from Rocky (1976), to Cinderella Man (2005), to The Fighter (2010), falls into this category. However, that…

Shut In is everything that is wrong with modern horror movies.  It is a scareless, dumb, predictable, laughable movie that made me immediately regret ever entering the theater. Shut In is about Mary (Naomi Watts), a widowed child psychologist who takes care of her crippled son (Charlie Heaton) in an isolated house in rural New England.  When one of Mary’s patients (Jacob Tremblay) goes missing near her house, she tries to find a way to…

Moonlight is one of the most important movies of 2016.  It looks at a part of life most people know nothing about – homosexuality in the African American community- and looks at in great depth, with excellent filmmaking and great performances. However, I didn’t love it. This is nowhere near a bad movie.  In fact, two-thirds of the movie are absolutely brilliant, and some of the toughest, most emotional cinema I’ve seen all year.  But,…

Arrival is a jaw-dropping masterpiece.  It is a simple story at its surface, but peels back layers to reveal something truly special.  Dennis Villeneuve has created a powerful, visually stunning film that pushes the science-fiction genre to new heights. When alien spaceships land all across the globe, the government seeks the help of a linguist (Amy Adams) to help communicate with the aliens. Amy Adams is one my favorite actresses ever and is one of the…

While watching Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson’s latest war epic, their was a quote that stood out to me the whole time; “Say what you want about Mel Gibson, but the son of a bitch knows story structure.” This, of course, is from the great South Park episode, Imaginationland, who notoriously imagined Gibson as an insane, Daffy Duck-like figure who runs around in his underwear grabbing his nipples.  Now, I’m sure Gibson doesn’t run around in his underwear grabbing his nipples,…

Doctor Strange marks the 14th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and it is definitely the weirdest and most ambitious Marvel film to date.  Though it bares similarities to other Marvel films and hits all the standard themes and tropes of all their intro films, this is a film that pushes the studio’s boundaries both cinematically and narratively. Doctor Strange has, essentially, the same premise as the original Iron Man (2008).  An arrogant doctor (Benedict Cumberbatch), known for his…

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…

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,…

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,…

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…