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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: Visually impressive, Isle of Dogs is another excellent effort from Wes Anderson who seems to only have excellent efforts. 

I’ll be the first to admit Wes Anderson doesn’t always do it for me. This goes all the way back to his first films. I remember being told how important it was for me to see Rushmore and how much I’d love it. I didn’t love it. I don’t even know if I liked it. I couldn’t say it wasn’t a good movie though. It just didn’t work for me. That’s how it’s been with the entire filmography of Wes Anderson. I don’t always like what I see but I can never diminish the expert craftsmanship he displays. Here, in Isle of Dogs, Anderson combines his signature style with stop-motion animation (not the first time for that as he previously used stop-motion animation for Fantastic Mr. Fox), his ability to attract A-list talent and an incredible score from Alexandre Desplat to deliver a smart, funny, uncompromising and imaginative look at the relationship between man and dog that doesn’t rely on its political subplot to entertain. It’s one of Anderson’s better works although Moonrise Kingdom is still my favorite.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: For everyone who has seen a flyer about human trafficking at a rest stop and thought that might make an interesting movie… too bad it didn’t.

Traffik is obviously a B-movie. It’s over-the-top depiction of trafficking intertwined with a dream-to-nightmare weekend thriller fails to work as entertainment and dually misses  the opportunity to educate outside of a few blurbs that roll right before the credits with facts and figures on the prevalence of human trafficking in our country. It’s a sad, difficult and often boring watch that shows every bit of its scant budget but at least proves the ’70s haven’t cornered the market on exploitation flicks.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: Pointless sequel. It’s like a pack of crackers you find stuffed in the back of the pantry. Sure, they look tasty but once you bite in, they’re dry and stale. 

I’m not the best person to review Super Troopers 2. I never really understood the allure of the original (although we could never keep it in stock at the Blockbuster I worked at) and if I wasn’t someone who saw almost everything, there’s little to no chance for me to see this one. But since I see almost everything, Super Troopers 2 hit my radar and, to my chagrin, lived down to those low expectations. Then again, what should you expect from a film that uses a cameo from a character (Stifler from American Pie) that hasn’t been relevant since the early 2000s to open the movie?Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: If I Feel Pretty were Amy Schumer’s first movie, it would have been more effective. It has funny moments but takes forever to get going and then gets super schmaltzy in the third act.

I was cautious when it comes to I Feel Pretty. Anyone who comes onto the scene as hard as Amy Schumer did with 2015’s Trainwreck runs a serious risk of fizzling out. Signs of the Schumer fizzle were evident with last year’s Snatched which struggled at the box office, missed with critics and failed to please audiences. It’s hard to say anything different about I Feel Pretty when it comes to results as the Schumer comedy had her lowest opening at the box office, currently sits at a 33% Tomatometer and audiences have liked it at a rather alarming 31%. Considering how big of a hit Trainwreck was and how well received it was with critics and audiences, it’s a pretty big fall for Schumer who just 3 years ago starred in the 29th top grossing film of the year.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: As far as video game movies go, this one isn’t terrible. “The Rock” probably deserves all the credit for that.

Maybe it’s a stupid criticism but Rampage feels like it should have been released in the summer. The mindless video game adaptation of a game whose plot is basically destroy cities with big mutated creatures was given a plot and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to give it a big screen adrenaline shot. The plot? Who cares! Johnson, however, continues to deliver as he can even take the most generic, pointless action plot and find a way to make it charming, fun and worth watching. Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: Thanks to Jon Hamm, Beirut is a just above average thriller with enough gas in the tank to keep you intrigued for the nearly 2 hour run time. 

Jon Hamm’s television career was defined by his role as Don Draper on the long-running hit Mad Men. Admittedly, I’m not familiar with Hamm’s work on that show as it never made my watch list. His film career has been less auspicious with very few starring roles and a number of solid but unspectacular supporting roles. In Beirut, Hamm is cast in a long overdue starring role as a former U.S. diplomat who is asked to go back to Beirut to help negotiate a hostage release. It’s a rather generic thriller from writer Tony Gilroy of Bourne franchise fame but Hamm’s presence along with support from Rosamund Pike and a handful of typical bit players (Dean Norris being in this type of movie is a great example of unsurprising casting) kicks the film just above mediocrity and delivers a mostly satisfying viewing experience. The ’80s Beirut setting adds to the film’s feel of a film that was sitting around in a vault somewhere… or maybe that’s the 27-year-old script which was dug out of Gilroy’s storage bin, dusted off and given the big screen treatment.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: As expected… Which isn’t necessarily a good thing when it comes to these Blumhouse horror flicks.

The goal of every Blumhouse horror movie seems to be to make a movie with at least one good scare and to do it as cheaply as possible. With a $3.5 million budget, half of that mission was accomplished with the latest from Blumhouse Productions and the first branded with the studio’s name: Blumhouse’s Truth Or Dare. The second half of that mission? I can’t remember one scary moment that stuck with me following the 100 minute generic teen horror flick which felt like a mash-up of familiar horror tropes layered over a deadly game of truth or dare. Lie, you die. Fail to complete the dare, you die. Refuse to play, you die. Those were the rules. Thankfully, one of those rules wasn’t lose interest in this wonky concept, you die because, well, a lot of audience members would have met their demise. Don’t worry, though. These Blumhouse films are fail proof and will likely pull in 15-20 times it’s budget at the box office even with a Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score of 20%.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: It’s a miracle if you make it out of this one with dry eyes, even if you don’t care for it’s saccharine-sweet dramatization of the amazing story of the West High School volleyball team in the aftermath of the death of one of their teammates.

The basis for The Miracle Season would have been more interesting as a topic for ESPN’s “30 for 30” which lives for stories such as these. Instead, director Sean McNamara wanted to bring it to the big screen and squeeze out every tear you never knew you had in re-telling the story of the West High School volleyball team after the death of teammate Caroline Found during the follow-up to their championship season in 2011. Crushed by the loss, the team no longer wants to play but Coach Bres initially forces and then pushes them back on the court and eventually, the team rebounds and begins an unexpected run toward an improbable second consecutive state championship. It’s every sports movie you’ve ever seen with the rare exception that this one is fact-based as the events depicted happened and “Live Like Line” became the team’s call as they moved from sadness to rejoicing in honoring their fallen teammate throughout the 2012 season depicted in the film. It’s an inspirational story, if you can see through the manipulative efforts taken by McNamara to insure the audience is left in a puddle of tears as they watch the season unfold on screen.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: I want to respect this movie for it’s refusal to sensationalize the subject matter. However, the straightforward flick felt less like a feature film and more like a history lesson.

Hollywood has devoted a lot of resources to making feature films and television shows about the Kennedys. Ted Kennedy hasn’t really been more than a side note in these films and shows until Chappaquiddick which re-lives the personally darkest point of Ted’s life. It’s re-creation of the events surrounding the car accident at Chappaquiddick Island which involved Ted and one of the women who worked on Robert Kennedy’s campaign, Mary Jo Kopechne. The accident involved Ted’s car careening off a small bridge and into a pond. Kennedy escaped but Kopechne was unable to get out of the car and drowned. Straightforward and documentary-like, Chappaquiddick follows the story from the accident to the aftermath and how Ted initially planned to not reveal he was in the car and waited nearly half a day to turn himself into the authorities. It also reveals how this scandal was handled politically by Kennedy’s team of advisors and family. Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take, Uncategorized

Hot Take: Some combination of Superbad, American Pie and Porky’s sprinkled with sex-positive feminism. Also, the adult trio of Cena, Mann and Barinholtz deliver laughs, too.

There’s a good chance we’ll see Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon again. The trio of actresses who portray high school seniors who join in a sex pact as they head to prom night in Blockers will likely be sought after much like their counterparts have in past high school comedies. Although the trio aren’t necessarily the stars of the film — John Cena, Leslie Mann and Ian Barinholtz take up the majority of the screen time — these three are the heart and soul of the raunchy, sex-positive teen comedy that takes the rare path of featuring females instead of males in the main teenage roles. Maybe the fact that the teens are female is why this studio comedy spent so much time focusing on the adult characters who are bound and determined to stop their daughters from losing their virginity on prom night but, heck, it’s a start, right?Read More →