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…
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I love Amy Adams. From the first time I saw her as the innocent nurse in Catch Me If You Can (2002), she has grown into one of the finest actresses we have in Hollywood. This weekend, she stars in the sci-fi thriller, Arrival, (my review right here). So in honor of that, here are my five favorite Amy Adams movies. These movies are based on the performance of Adams and the quality of the movie. I…
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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,…
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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…
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So, I definitely forgot to do this list for October. I was so busy the whole month, I completely blanked on it. My bad, ya’ll. But now, I’m back, and ready to give you the best movies coming out in November. This month is completely loaded. So loaded, in fact, I had to leave off such titles as Nocturnal Animals, Moana, Trolls, and one of my favorite movies of 2016, Elle. I also excluded Hacksaw Ridge and Doctor Strange…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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With the Oscar nominations being announced Tuesday morning, here are my final Oscar predictions for the 2017 Oscars. I’m only going to predict the major categories and skip the tech awards for spacial reasons. BEST PICTURE We have three guarantees in LA LA LAND, MOONLIGHT, and MANCHESTER BY THE SEA. These are the three front runners and guaranteed nominations. HIDDEN FIGURES has been making some moves, as has LION, which pulled a surprise DGA nomination. Some former…
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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,…
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