The 2021 Sundance Film Festival kicks off this week and though this year’s festival might look a little different than most years, it is still bound to be a great festival. What I like best about the movies at Sundance is that you never know what you are going to get. You might get a trailer for a few movies but for the most part, you are going off the synopsis, the cast, and the…
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The Little Things is as basic as cop thrillers get. The IMDb plot description is “two cops track down a serial killer” and that’s very accurate because that is really all that happens. Though it tries to add layers to its characters and story, the film never reaches its full potential and instead ends up being a mildly captivating, overlong thriller with solid performances. In The Little Things, Joe “Deke” Deacon (Denzel…
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La Casa begins with a series of archival news footage looking at a haunted house in a town in Chile. The footage gives us a history of the house and the family that lived there, who were trying to start a family and when they were unable to conceive a child, they resorted to black magic for help, though when the child was finally born it was born deformed. This caused madness…
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Outside the Wire is a futuristic, militarized version of 2001’s Training Day. A movie that looks at a rookie on the job who follows along his too-good-at-his-job leader while questioning some of his methods in getting the job done. This is a movie we’ve all seen before, but the thrilling action and a captivating lead performance keep this one relatively interesting. Set in 2036, drone pilot Lieutenant Thomas Harpa (Damson Idris) is…
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2020 is officially over, thank goodness. It was a very stressful year thanks to a global pandemic and too many social injustices to count, but we made it. This was arguably the strangest year in cinematic history, as movie theaters were open, then closed, then partially opened again, and then mostly closed again, while major studios moved their film slate to 2021 and beyond. There was also a large number of films that went to…
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Writing about my favorite performances of the year is always one of my favorite pieces. It makes me think back to all the great performances that I watched over the year and makes me want to rewatch the great movies these performances were in. However, it is also a very stressful piece to make because there are performances I am forced to leave off my list, which really breaks my heart. 2020 is no exception…
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Every movie year offers what feels like dozens of great performances. Some go on to win Academy Awards and other accolades while other performances get no love at all. This list is dedicated to the latter group. 2020 was a great year for performances. I was making my “Best Performance of 2020” list and was really struggling to narrow the list down, so that’s where this list comes in. This is a list of performances…
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Continuing my look at the best movies of 2020 these are my picks for the best movies from each genre. This will categories such as Best Animated Film, Best Action Film, and Biggest Surprise. BEST ANIMATED FILM WOLFWALKERS SOUL ONWARD THE WILLOUGHBYS OVER THE MOON – Though Soul has the making of a new Pixar classic, Wolfwalkers’ gorgeous 2D animation mixed with its beautiful and cultural story blew me away. BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM…
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Continue our look back of the best movies of 2020, here are my picks for the best technical aspects in the movies of 2020. These categories include Best Original and Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound, and Best Original Song. Each category will have a top five, with the number one spot being what I consider to be the winner. BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY MANK PALM SPRINGS MINARI DA 5 BLOODS ANOTHER ROUND…
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COVID-19 really put a damper on the cinematic experience in 2020. In March the theaters closed down, then they reopened later in the summer with a very limited number of movies being shown, and then, depending where you lived, the theaters closed down again. Though 2020 was still a really great year for movies, thanks to virtual film festival, virtual theaters, and studios making their films available on-demand, there were still some movies that I…
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