By:
On:
In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Looking for a movie that is 85% action, 10% cheesy flirting and double entendres and 5% plot? xXx: Return of Xander Cage should be on your short list.

What would January be without a few useless sequels? xXx: Return of Xander Cage might be the least useless sequel of January 2017 though as there’s probably a few xXx fans out there who wanted Vin Diesel to come back and reprise his role from the original xXx. They were surely hoping it would have happened sooner than 15 years but at least it was made before Diesel’s 50th birthday which is later in 2017.Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Apparently, a dog’s purpose is to die on screen to manufacture tears from the audience. It isn’t the first time, it’s been done but it’s never been done with this frequency. Pure dog lover propaganda with dog abuse allegations as background noise don’t jive.

Your dog is going to die. I think that’s the point of A Dog’s Purpose. If you’re lucky enough, though, your next dog might be your old dog in a new body. I guess that’s the other point of A Dog’s Purpose. Trying to figure the point of this one, other than to make dog lovers screech, “Awwwwwww!” and children gleefully giggle, that’s the only logical conclusion.
Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Matthew McConaughey is great… the movie is adequate. What? Did you think I would pan it?

When you have a story “based on true events” starring Matthew McConaughey and it receives a limited release in December, you go in expecting Oscar caliber. The closest thing to Oscar caliber about Gold though is McConaughey’s performance as Kenny Wells, a prospector who has a dream there’s gold in the Indonesian jungle. Even that’s a stretch although McConaughey’s transformation from his normal look to balding and out of shape is almost as impressive as Christian Bale’s transformation for American Hustle a few years ago.Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2017, Lists, Ranked, Top Movies

Updated February 18th, 2018

  1. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
  2. Lady Bird
  3. Darkest Hour
  4. Wind River
  5. I, Tonya
  6. mother!
  7. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  8. Baby Driver
  9. A Ghost Story
  10. The Disaster Artist
  11. Patti Cake$
  12. It
  13. Wonder Woman
  14. Thank You For Your Service
  15. Detroit
  16. Ingrid Goes West
  17. Wonder
  18. The Shape of Water
  19. Molly’s Game
  20. Hostiles
  21. Coco
  22. Sleight
  23. The Big Sick
  24. War for the Planet of the Apes
  25. Logan
  26. Dunkirk
  27. The Post
  28. Battle of the Sexes
  29. Blade Runner 2049
  30. The Beguiled
  31. American Made
  32. Spider-Man: Homecoming
  33. John Wick: Chapter 2
  34. Kedi
  35. Gifted
  36. All the Money in the World
  37. Wonderstruck
  38. Beatriz at Dinner
  39. LBJ
  40. Everything, Everything
  41. Beauty and the Beast
  42. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie
  43. Born in China
  44. Crown Heights
  45. Thor: Ragnarok
  46. Same Kind of Different As Me
  47. Happy Death Day
  48. The Mountain Between Us
  49. The LEGO Ninjago Movie
  50. To The Bone
  51. 47 Meters Down
  52. Marshall
  53. The Lost City of Z
  54. The Zookeeper’s Wife
  55. Split
  56. The LEGO Batman Movie
  57. Tommy’s Honour
  58. I don’t feel at home in this world anymore.
  59. Get Out
  60. Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
  61. Logan Lucky
  62. Atomic Blonde
  63. Kong: Skull Island
  64. Free Fire
  65. Home Again
  66. Girls Trip
  67. How To Be A Latin Lover
  68. The Hitman’s Bodyguard
  69. Megan Leavey
  70. Lowriders
  71. The Foreigner
  72. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power
  73. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
  74. Stronger
  75. The Greatest Showman
  76. Roman J. Israel, Esq.
  77. Birth of the Dragon
  78. Daisy Winters
  79. Alien: Covenant
  80. Win It All
  81. A Bad Moms Christmas
  82. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
  83. Snatched
  84. Life
  85. Power Rangers
  86. Going in Style
  87. CHiPs
  88. Justice League
  89. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
  90. Phantom Thread
  91. Pitch Perfect 3
  92. Flatliners
  93. True to the Game
  94. Tulip Fever
  95. Before I Fall
  96. Only the Brave
  97. Brad’s Status
  98. The Boss Baby
  99. The Glass Castle
  100. Murder On The Orient Express
  101. Call Me By Your Name
  102. Paris Can Wait
  103. Good Time
  104. xXx: Return of Xander Cage
  105. The Sense of an Ending
  106. Ghost in the Shell
  107. The Wall
  108. It Comes At Night
  109. American Assassin
  110. Daddy’s Home 2
  111. Rough Night
  112. The Promise
  113. A Cure for Wellness
  114. Valley of Bones
  115. Despicable Me 3
  116. Transformers: The Last Knight
  117. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
  118. The Space Between Us
  119. Unforgettable
  120. The Fate of the Furious
  121. The Dark Tower
  122. King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
  123. The Belko Experiment
  124. A Dog’s Purpose
  125. The Circle
  126. Annabelle: Creation
  127. The Dinner
  128. ‘Til Death Do Us Part
  129. The House
  130. Fist Fight
  131. The Book of Henry
  132. Jigsaw
  133. War on Everyone
  134. Bitter Harvest
  135. Victoria & Abdul
  136. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
  137. Sandy Wexler
  138. Fifty Shades Darker
  139. The Great Wall
  140. Geostorm
  141. Baywatch
  142. Sleepless
  143. Suburbicon
  144. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter
  145. Collide
  146. Rings
  147. The Snowman
  148. The Mummy
  149. Kidnap
  150. The Emoji Movie
  151. Just Getting Started

 

By:
On:
In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Michael Keaton keeps turns out one great performance after another. How’d the Academy miss this one?

The only conclusion I can draw from Michael Keaton not being nominated for Best Actor this year is that between Birdman, Spotlight and The Founder, The Founder is probably his weakest performance. Since it came third, the Academy might have suffered fatigue and ignored his excellent performance as Ray Kroc in the story of how McDonald’s became McDonald’s.Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2016, 2017, Hot Take, Lists, Weigh In

We’re a few hours away from the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees. Like last year, now would be as good of a time as any to weigh in on who I think will be nominated for this year’s awards. And, for fun, who I’d nominate if my vote was the only one that counted:

Best Picture

My Nominations

  • Jackie
  • Sing Street
  • Hell or High Water
  • Moonlight
  • Fences
  • Arrival
  • La La Land
  • Everybody Wants Some!!
  • The Witch
  • Lion

Who Will Earn the Nominations (From most to least likely):Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Part of me liked Split. Part of me didn’t. You leave wanting to talk about it though and M. Night is gifted when it comes to getting people to talk about his movies.

M. Night Shyamalan has a knack for creating things people want to talk about, whether they want to see it or not. Split is a perfect example (and a perfectly placed film on the release schedule) of his ability to get people talking even without the usual overhype his previous films have had. In this case, Shyamalan’s secret weapon was James McAvoy who at even a glimpse in the trailer as he embodies multiple personalities (23 to be exact) had people very curious about Split.Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: A complete waste of time. Welcome to January!

Sometimes you see an actor and you wonder what were they thinking? Immediately after seeing Sleepless, a lazy remake of 2011 French thriller Sleepless Night, I Googled, “How much did Jamie Foxx get paid to make Sleepless?” I didn’t find an answer but I have to imagine it was a decent payday considering how bad the movie was. We’re talking about the guy who played Ray Charles and Django in one of the most cliché action movies in recent memory. Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Scorsese’s passion project took 20+ years to make it to the cinema. It’s hard to believe a film of its caliber with a director of Scorsese’s pedigree was this difficult to get financial support. Then again, it won’t make any money at the box office so you’d be hard pressed to fault the studios.

Silence is one of those films that you watch and realize why someone would become so obsessed with getting it made. You also realize, as the film spans 161 minutes and deals with very deep philosophical issues, why many studios wouldn’t give the film the time of day even with an auteur such as Martin Scorsese as the obsessed artist looking to bring the film to life. Silence is beautifully shot and well thought out. It’s a real think piece. It’ll also be lucky to break even despite its somewhat modest (in modern terms) $40 million budget.Read More →

By:
On:
In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Rogue One falls short of greatness thanks to a lack of story development. It is reliably good though and has the right mix of new (even though it’s really old) Star Wars bits and pieces to edify the audience.

How much you like Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is going to come down to what kind of Star Wars fan you are. This is already assuming very few non-Star Wars fans will give the prequel to the original Star Wars (which is actually the fourth chapter of the story) a shot. If you’re more of a fan of the action of the end of A New Hope or the opening scenes of Empire Strikes Back on Hoth and don’t need lightsaber battles to carry you through and couldn’t care less about the origin of most of the new characters introduced, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (Star Wars 3.9?) should be very pleasing.Read More →