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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Warning: Sequel fatigue!

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Tom Cruise is an action hero with seemingly superhuman power, endurance and pain threshold… Wait! I wasn’t even to the part where I thought you’d stop me. Let me continue! He plays Jack Reacher… Wait! Not yet! In the course of being set up by a rogue government agency… Nope! Not yet! Jack finds out the woman he might have a thing for, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders) has been wrongfully arrested… Wait! We’re getting closer! He also finds out he might have a daughter (Danika Yarosh) who he feels compelled to protect… Yup! That’s the one! But wait, it’s all just a lazy carbon copy of other action films with some even being ripped from previous Cruise movies.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: It’s a rare not horrible sequel (which is actually a prequel) and a rare not horrible horror movie. It’s still mediocre but has plenty of scares to please those looking to not sleep.

I’m not a huge fan of being scared. That made Ouija: Origin of Evil somewhat difficult to sit through. The film’s ’60s setting acts as an origin story to the original Ouija which was widely accepted as terrible despite a solid box office performance. The box office was strong enough to spawn this prequel and Ouija: Origin of Evil outshines its predecessor in every way.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: If only we had as much fun as the cast.

Give Keeping Up With the Joneses credit for one thing: The cast surely enjoyed themselves. There isn’t a scene where Zach Galifianakis, Isla Fisher, Jon Hamm or Gal Gadot don’t look like they are really enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, the movie that results, thanks to a largely stale script with mostly “been there, done that” bits, is just okay.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: It feels like someone defiantly decided to release this in theaters after CW rejected the pilot episode for a weekly show on their network.

Even if you’re still excited by the idea of a superhero movie, Max Steel is not the superhero movie you’re looking for. Based on a Mattel toy which inexplicably produced an animated series, a comic book, a video game and a reboot of the animated series (plus some direct-to-DVD nonsense and programming that can only be seen in Latin America for some reason), Max Steel is an ill-conceived, poorly written, boring, uninteresting effort. It’s a total waste of 92 minutes sans a few silly jokes from Steel, the alien robot being which links with Max McGrath (Ben Winchell) to become Max Steel.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: If I needed proof you can only be young once, Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life would definitely provide it. My 13 year old self would have loved it. My 40 year old self? Nope.

I get it. Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life did not target me as their audience. If this were 25-30 years ago, I would have been all about this movie. Unfortunately, my outlook on life has changed slightly over the past few decades and a movie I probably would have loved around the time I was entering my teenage years was now not all that entertaining. Having gone back and watched some movies I’ve watched and loved as a kid, it’s unsurprising to feel this way, either. I didn’t have the most cultured tastes of movies as a kid (not that they’ve gotten much better as an adult, right?).Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Once it gets going, The Accountant is pretty good. Even if there are some hard to swallow coincidences along the way.

In the first act of The Accountant, there are plenty of opportunities to check out. The film has a slow start. Saddled with a lot of storytelling baggage, The Accountant eventually sheds the excess weight somewhere in the second act and becomes an escapist action flick only hampered by the immense amount of happenstance and coincidence the writers decided to cram in the film.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: This is Kevin Hart as expected. If you’re a fan, you’ll enjoy.

Last year, Kevin Hart was in Philadelphia to close out his stand-up tour to a sold out crowd at Lincoln Financial Field. By doing so, he became the first comedian to perform at an at-capacity football stadium. Hart’s stand-up in front of 53,000 was turned into a stand-up comedy concert film and Kevin Hart: What Now? is the end result.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: A rare purely positive experience at the theater. The thought of the story will warm your heart for days. It should put even the most cynical in checkmate.

The biggest criticism you might be able to send across Queen of Katwe‘s bow is that there’s a Disneyfied aspect to the story. However, a bit of research reveals the heart of the movie’s story beats true as very little of the true tale of Phona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga), a young girl from the slums of Uganda whose life changes when she realizes her masterful chess talent, is embellished. If anything, the film downplays some of the more gritty aspects of how tough the living conditions for her and her family truly were.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Masterminds manages to steal two hours of your life and never give it back.

If you don’t know the backstory to the release of Masterminds, it’s worth getting you up to speed. Set for release in August 2015, the film’s studio Relativity pushed the release back to October 2015 due to financial troubles. As the company headed into bankruptcy, the movie was shelved for an entire year. Finally, with Relativity out of bankruptcy, the movie was released at the end of September 2016. Why do I mention the backstory? Well, it’s much more interesting to discuss the backstory than the actual movie.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: By twisting the facts, The Birth of a Nation takes liberties where it doesn’t need to. The real story contains enough that it doesn’t need any help.

Any time a movie is “based on a true story”, you’re bound to get differences between reality and the Hollywood-polished movie version. The Birth of a Nation, by first time director and writer Nate Parker (who also starred as Nat Turner), is the latest example of a movie that unnecessarily strays too far from the truth to the point where a potentially great film becomes just an okay movie. If this were a fictional tale, it actually would have been better but as a biopic the film revises history too much in an attempt to incite the audience unnecessarily. And not unnecessarily as the topic is unimportant but the actual story has plenty to incite the audience.Read More →