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Hot Take: Would have been a decent Saturday afternoon made-for-basic cable movie.

Locally, Valley of Bones had a 1 week run. It’s still playing in a few theaters in its second week but while it was in 8 theaters within 50 miles of my house in its opening week, it will drop to 1 theater tomorrow unless there’s a last minute change to the local theater schedules. They did have to make run for It, after all. Over the weekend, Valley of Bones made 134,076 or $447. At an average of 5 showings per day on a 4-day holiday weekend, that’s less than $30 per showing. So, the 2 other strangers in the theater and myself for the final Sunday showing was actually an average crowd for the drama/thriller about a dinosaur bone hunter (Autumn Reeser) and a T-Rex dig in the North Dakota Badlands spawned by the discovery of a meth addict (Steve Molony) who was busy killing someone on his sponsor’s (Alexandra Billings) ranch. Sound a little far-fetched? Yup.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Not sexy enough to be a torrid erotic thriller. (Actually, it goes out of it’s way to cancel out sexy moments.) Not terrible enough to be a trashy B-movie. (Actually, it achieves mediocrity for the most part.)

The long, painful odyssey that was the release of Tulip Fever is finally over. The acclaimed 2000 novel by Deborah Moggach was a highly sought after commodity at one point. In 2004, the project was attached to Steven Spielberg as the producer, John Madden as director and Keira Knightley, Jude Law and Jim Broadbent as the lead actors. A change in the tax rules in the UK put a halt to the proposed $48 million production thus putting the project in limbo. In 2013, the film was resurrected. This time it was attached to Harvey Weinstein and Alison Owens as producers with Alicia Vikander and Matthias Schoenaerts in the prominent roles. In 2014, the project was officially acquired by The Weinstein Company away from Paramount Pictures, Schoenaerts was no longer included in the project now expected to be directed by Justin Chadwick and a strong cast including Christoph Waltz, Judi Dench, Dane DeHaan, Zach Galifianakis, Jack O’Connell, Cara Delevingne, Holliday Grainger and others joined the cast. Production began on the Tom Stoppard script and the film was shot in two months… in 2014.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Awful title. Far-fetched, well acted thriller about a botched bank robbery and what happens afterward, I guess. Robert Pattinson shows some acting chops though.

Do you consider yourself a hipster? If you answer “yes” or “no”, it doesn’t speak to what you’ll think of Good Time, the 2017 urban drama/thriller starring Robert Pattinson. If, however, you said, “What the hell kind of question is that?” it actually means two things. (1) You’re probably a hipster and (2) you’ll probably love Good Time. Personally, I’m on the fence with the film. There was enough to like about Good Time to lock in my interest until the end but, afterward, it left me feeling a little bit hollow about the whole viewing experience. A little too much was left on the table for me to call the film anything more than mediocre.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: The best movie of 2017 so far! For the second straight year, writer/director Taylor Sheridan has delivered a hidden gem.

As we head into Labor Day weekend, all reports are expecting this weekend’s box office to be the slowest in over 2 decades. It’s easy to figure out why since the two new wide releases are the 40th anniversary re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Tulip Fever which is finally making it to theaters on its 4th announced release date after over 2 years in limbo. Just because the releases are soft and we’re far away from the release of a $100 million box office film (Girls Trip and Dunkirk on July 21) doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth seeing. That brings us to Wind River, a film from writer/director Taylor Sheridan who was also the the writer behind last year’s Hell or High Water. The two films share some similarities as they both came to theaters with little fanfare in August and were both small budget films (Hell or High Water had an announced $12 million budget while Wind River had an $11 million budget). After seeing Wind River, I recommend it make your “Must See” list of films of 2017 which, at this point, isn’t longer than a few films.Read More →

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In: 2017, Ranked, Trailers

September is a snapshot of the movie industry in 2017. There’s not a lot to get excited about and even those that are worth anticipating have some baggage. Whether it be It which looks awfully scary BUT we’ll be comparing it to the two-part TV movie from 1990 or American Made starring Tom Cruise who is fresh off one of the worst movies of 2017 in The Mummy or Mother! which features Jennifer Lawrence and is directed by Darren Aronofsky but neither showed up well in their last effort (Passengers for Lawrence and Noah for Aronofsky) or a handful of smaller films that might catch lightning in a bottle (Battle of the Sexes, Rebel In the Rye, Woodshock, Lucky, Stronger) but are conspicuous by their absence of a wider release in a soft month. There’s a big sequel — Kingsman: The Golden Circle — which has had such a quiet release that has to make you wonder. There’s a remake — Flatliners — which looks to have too many bells and whistles and is likely to lose some of the original’s appeal. There’s Tulip Fever… again! Seriously, how many times am I going to put Tulip Fever on my anticipated releases list? I’m starting to feel like Charlie Brown and I think Tulip Fever is Lucy.Enough about how sketchy the September release slate is. Here’s all 35 expected releases ranked in order of anticipation:Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: I’m conflicted. Most of me thinks Birth of the Dragon wasn’t very good but damn if part of me didn’t thoroughly enjoy it and would probably watch it again.

I’m not sure what to make of Birth of the Dragon. First of all, I’m not entirely sure it was a Bruce Lee biopic since it is not entirely accurate. It’s more an “inspired by true events” re-imagining of Lee’s life which, I guess, can technically still be a biopic. Second, while I saw many flaws in the storyline, plot and performances, I couldn’t help but find myself thoroughly sucked into the tale and chomping at the bit during not one but two very entertaining martial arts sequences. Again, this isn’t an endorsement of quality but definitely one of entertainment, especially if you happen to enjoy older ’70s martial arts films starring the movie’s subject.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: An original and artistic endeavor that requires some patience from you as the viewer. You may love it, you may hate it but it will definitely solicit a strong reaction.

Want to know whether or not your up for even the possibility of enjoying the experience of watching A Ghost Story? Early on in the film, after Casey Affleck’s character has died and becomes a voiceless shape under a sheet, we watch Rooney Mara’s character eat a pie… for 8 minutes. In context, it’s grueling and gutwrenching and relatable for anyone who has struggled with coping with grief. Out of context, it sounds silly. As A Ghost Story stretches out over 87 minutes, you must invest in observing much like the ghost does as the rest of the world moves on and continues on without him. It’s an exercise in patient observation which is odd to say since all watching a movie normally requires is observing but, in most cases, it is the movie’s ability to immerse you in the action, drama or comedy and perceive you are doing more than just observe that makes it a worthwhile experience. However, here, in A Ghost Story, the film just asks you to watch and feel.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: A casualty of Relativity Media’s financial crisis, Kidnap was supposed to be released in 2015 but delayed until 2017. If only the master copy could have been lost between then and now, maybe no one would have been subjected to this terrible garbage.

The expectations for Kidnap were about as low as they could get. When considering all of the challenges this film faced to just get released and previous disappointing films tied to Relativity Media (The Disappointments Room and Masterminds) that were delayed due to their financial situation and finally released and factoring in that Kidnap was delayed even longer, what Kidnap had to accomplish to meet expectations would have been the equivalent of a basketball star jumping over a phone book. After seeing Kidnap, it’s safe to say that if it were a basketball star trying to jump over a phone book, it would have tripped and fallen flat on its face. Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: It seems like Aubrey Plaza has a way of committing herself to every role she has no matter how stupid or ridiculous and she finally gets a role that’s really worth sinking her teeth into as Ingrid.

Each week I get an e-mail that tells me how many Twitter followers I’ve gained and lost. This week I netted a double digit gain. I remember getting a little excited to read that. That’s about as far as my obsession with social media goes. Ingrid Thorburn, the main character played by Aubrey Plaza in Ingrid Goes West, takes that social media obsession to another level. The unstable Ingrid and the satirical and insightful look at the current state of social interaction via social media makes Ingrid Goes West a home run of a flick and gives summer a quirky boost before it ends.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: An educational, timely and a little bit ominous (Thank you, Mr. Trump) journey back to climate change with Al Gore and graphs. Lots and lots of graphs!

I feel your reaction to An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power will be impacted by how much you care about climate change or if you believe in it at all. I’m not sure how you could sit in a theater for 2 hours (4 if you saw the first movie) and see all of the evidence presented and dismiss what you can see right in front of you. Then again, you might think Al Gore isn’t being honest, the graphs are manipulated or made up and the whole thing is propaganda. It was really cold last winter so how could there be global warming, right?Read More →