Scream, the fifth installment in the Scream franchise that probably should have been titled something like 5cream or simply Scream 5 or Scream V, is a testament to Scream as a franchise. Since the first film debuted in 1996, the Scream franchise has stuck to its roots in terms of what it is: murderous whodunits filled with meta-humor about the state of horror films. Whenever a new Scream film comes out, regardless of…
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It’s that time. Time to look at the best movies of 2021. Crazy that the year is officially over, but here we are. 2021 as a whole was an interesting one, but as a movie year, I thought it was rather great. Though the COVID-19 pandemic still lingered around the entire year, we saw movie theaters open back up and audiences head back to the cineplex. Film festivals had an interesting year, with some being…
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Continuing my look at the best movies of 2021, here are my picks for the best performances in 2021. Every year this is the toughest list to make and every year I feel bad about leaving some performances off. Like previous years, I have broken the performances down by category, much like the Oscars, with Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. For each category, I will list the “nominees” and…
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Continuing my look back at the best movies of 2021, I am now going to look at some of my favorite movie scenes and moments from the movies of 2021. Whether it was a masterclass scene of acting, an exhilarating action scene, or a moment of pure entertainment, these were all scenes from 2021 movies that I loved. There were a ton of movie scenes that I loved in 2021, but this group of movie…
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Continuing my look back at the best movies of 2021, I am now going to look at the best technical achievements of 2021. I will be looking at the best screenplays of the years, the best camera and set work, the best music, and other technical categories. Like Best of the Genres, each category will have five “nominees” (a.k.a my personal top five) with my “winner” (my favorite) in bold, followed by short reasoning as…
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Continuing my look back at the best movies of 2021, I am now going to look at the best movies from each genre. I will be looking at the best foreign-language film, best comedy, and best action movie, along with other genres. Each category will have five “nominees” (a.k.a my personal top five) with my “winner” (my favorite) in bold, followed by short reasoning as to why I picked it the best. Here are my…
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Comic book movies dominate the cinematic landscape today. It feels like every year more franchises and comic book characters are being brought to the big screen. Though 2020 was a very strange cinematic year, we still got a handful of comic book movies. Pandemic or not, comic book movies are here to stay. 2021 offered up eight comic book movies, which is close to the same number we got in 2019 and 2018 (we had…
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Nightmare Alley marks director Guillermo del Toro’s first film following his Best Picture-winning The Shape of Water, a beautiful, twisted romance that looked at the love between a mute woman and an amphibian fish person. del Toro netted himself a Best Director Oscar along with Best Picture and the film also went on to win Best Original Score and Best Production Design, along with being nominated for a total of thirteen awards. I’m…
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Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is a hang-out movie. It is a movie that rides the same vibe as movies like Dazed and Confused and Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. A basically plotless odyssey through a time and place where things happen, but nothing super significant. This isn’t about what happens as much as it is about who it happens to. It is one of the very best movies of the year. It…
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Following a comedic directorial run of Anchorman, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys, arguably the greatest comedy run by a director this century, director Adam McKay shifted his focus to more dramatic, political fare that has garnered him tons of awards and nominations. With 2015’s The Big Short, McKay went after big banks and the 2008 recession in a film that garnered five Academy Award nominations,…
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