The opening shot of Tom Ford’s second feature film, Nocturnal Animals, is a shot of an older, 300-plus pound nude woman dancing in slow-motion as gold confetti falls from the sky against a bright red backdrop.  It is a beautifully shot image, yet an unsettling one to a degree, especially as it is the first thing we see in the movie. This shot is what for Nocturnal Animals is as a movie.  Beautiful, yet unsettling. Nocturnal Animals follows Susan Morrow…

Here’s the deal with boxing movies; you know exactly how it is going to end.  Regardless of the story, the film will always end with a climactic fight where the main fighter will give it his all and either win or lose.  There are a couple exceptions to this, mainly Raging Bull (1980) and Million Dollar Baby (2004), but almost every other boxing film, from Rocky (1976), to Cinderella Man (2005), to The Fighter (2010), falls into this category. However, that…

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…

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,…

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…

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,…

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…