Movie Reviews

Since January, I championed Nate Parker’s The Birth of a Nation as the very best movie of 2016.  I saw fourteen movies before The Birth of a Nation and over 100 after and it was still the very best movie I had seen all year, and by good margin.  I knew the film was in for a tough battle to stay at number one during Oscar season, due to the amount of high profile films coming out from some…

Collateral Beauty is the cinematic equivalent of being promised a giant, juicy dinner and then getting to the table and being served celery wrapped in white bread with a side of white rice.  It is incredibly disappointing and painfully bland. The movie is essentially about sad rich people.  Howard (Will Smith) is an incredibly successful ad executive with a great team of friends and co-workers behind him (Kate Winslet, Edward Norton, Michael Peña).  After Howard loses…

From its crawl-less beginning to its very last “hopeful” shot, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is unlike any Star Wars movie ever made.  Besides being the first origin movie that strays away from the traditional storyline, it is also the most un-Star Wars films ever.  This is an exhilarating war film and one that will blow you away. Rogue One takes place between Episode III: Revenge of Sith and Episode IV: A New Hope, as the Imperial…

Lion is one of the most emotional movies of 2016.  It is a movie that continuously hits you in the feels, yet not overdoing it to make it melodramatic. Lion is the incredible true story of Saroo (Sunny Pawar), a five year old boy who gets lost on the streets of Calcutta, thousands of kilometers from home.  He survives the tough streets and ends up being adopted by an Australian family (Nicole Kidman, David Wenham) and…

Office Christmas Party is one of those comedies where it is all about the cast.  The plot and story are all irrelevant, the love stories are useless and lame, and the movie runs too long.  But God damn, if this isn’t a cast of comedic all-stars that make this movie a blast. When an uptight CEO (Jennifer Aniston) threatens to shut down his branch, a branch manager (T.J. Miller) throws an epic Christmas party to…

I first saw Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.  It was towards the end of the festival and the hype around the film was through the roof.  The film ended up being one of my favorites of the festival and was one I was constantly thinking about for months after. I decided check the movie out again when it finally got a wide release, a rarity for me, as I would…

The Eyes of My Mother is a truly disturbing and horrifying film, yet one of the most beautifully shot and made films of the year. The film looks at the life of Francisca, a lonely girl who witnesses a horrible tragedy the skewers her way of life.  We see as young Francisca (Olivia Bond) learns how to do facial surgery using dead animals, and we watch the questionable parenting techniques of her parents, until tragedy…

Loving tells one of the most important moments in the history of the United State.  It is the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving (Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga), an interracial couple in the 1950’s who fight for their right be married in Virginia after being banned from the state for getting married in Washington D.C.  The film looks at their lives as they struggle to get the banned lifted while attempting to keep…

In 1946, Hollywood mogul and aviation tycoon Howard Hughes got into a horrific plane crash in Beverly Hills, California.  The crash demolished three houses, blew up the plane Hughes was in, and nearly killed Hughes, causing him a number of injuries, including a crushed collar bone, multiple cracked ribs, crushed chest with collapsed left lung, shifting his heart to the right side of the chest cavity, and numerous third-degree burns. This crash pales in comparison to the…

Disney has done it again.  Moana is simply dazzling.  A sweet, funny, heartfelt film with beautiful animation and spectacular voice work. Moana is about a young girl named Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho), the destined princess of her tribe, though she feels there is more to her life than following in her father’s footsteps.  When her tribe and island are in danger, Moana adventures out to save them, by sailing the high seas in search of…