Movie Reviews

Johnny Depp’s still got it. After a series of duds, Depp’s acting and film choices made us question his ability as an actor. But as James ‘Whitey’ Bulger in Scott Cooper’s gangster drama Black Mass, Depp gives one of his best performances to date and proves why he is one of the best actors in Hollywood. Told through the stories of Bulger’s henchmen, we start in 1975 with Bulger as a small-time, yet intimidating force…

We have seen movies about the quarter-life crises, like The Graduate (1967), Garden State (2004), and The Worlds End (2013).  We have seen midlife-crises movies like 8 1/2 (1963), American Beauty (1999), and The Incredibles (2004).  What we don’t see a lot of, however, is the three-quarter life crises movie.  We rarely see movies about people in their elder years looking back at life and realizing, after seeing friends and loved ones die, that they haven’t fulfilled…

Here’s a film history lesson for you.  In 1999, director M. Night Shyamalan released his first monumental film The Sixth Sense.  It was a massive success, both at the box office and with awards, and launched Shyamalan on to the Hollywood scene.  That same year, a groundbreaking horror film titled The Blair Witch Project came out and brought the found footage horror genre into the mainstream. Since 1999 however, neither Shyamalan nor the found-footage horror genre…

When comedic actors venture into drama, it can go one of two ways.  They can be great, like Adam Sandler in Punch-Drunk Love (2002) or Steve Carrell in Foxcatcher (2014).  Or, they can be terrible, like Vince Vaughn in Psycho (1998) or Jim Carrey in The Number 23 (2007).  So when I heard that Jason Segel of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) and How I Met Your Mother fame was stepping into the dramatic world as author…

Straight Outta Compton, was another film I could not wait to see in 2015.  In fact, it was number three on my Most Anticipated Films of 2015 behind only J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman (2014) follow-up, The Revenant.  The trailers for the film were electric, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube were godfathering the film, the cast looked good, the director was established, and the music was…

One of the worst things to watch as a film critic is a gifted cast wasted in a terrible movie.  With films like Ocean’s 12 (2004), All the King’s Men (2006), Bobby (2006), and Movie 43 (2013), studios put together an all-star, awards caliber team and put them into a movie that is either underwhelming or just awful. However, Josh Trank’s Fant4stic might be the biggest culprit of this travesty, as Fant4stic is a cinematic debacle that…

Southpaw was a film I could not wait to see.  It was number nine on my Most Anticipated Films of 2015 list that I made at the beginning of the year.  It had everything going for it.  An established director in Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, 2001), an incredible cast, including Rachel McAdams, Oscar winner Forrest Whitaker, and a jacked Jake Gyllenhaal, excellent marketing and trailers, and a soundtrack produced by Eminem. Sadly, the film did…

Before going into Ant-Man, the 12th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was a bit hesitant.  My lack of knowledge of Ant-Man gave me the idea that this superhero and his powers were kind of a joke and mildly stupid compared the other Marvel heroes we have met so far.  Also, the production was a troubled one, with one of my favorite directors, Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, 2007), originally set to direct but left…

Amy is a look at the life of troubled artist Amy Winehouse, from the early days to her downfall into drugs, alcohol, and her eventual death at the young age of 27. I did not know a lot about Winehouse before going into this movie.  I thought that she was just another artist who couldn’t handle the rockstar life style.  But director Asif Kapadia has given us a much deeper story than that. The first…

I don’t go to the movies to see bad movies.  I don’t ever want a movie to be bad because then it just wastes my time and money.  But, Terminator Genisys was one I had a bad feeling about from the beginning.  From the awful, spoilerific trailer, to the current state of Hollywood, and the casting, this movie had all the makings to fail. I don’t want to toot my own horn or anything, but…