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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 →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: One of the most tension-filled films in recent memory. By far, the best movie of 2018 to date. It’s also one of the best “Go to the Movies” movies in quite some time.

While Titanic isn’t my favorite film (although it’s in my Top 5), it is easily the movie I enjoy seeing the most in theaters. Every time it is re-released, I go as far as I need to go to see it. I’ve seen it 8 times in theaters. It’s one of those theatrical experiences that you don’t get from most movies. A Quiet Place, a suspense/thriller/horror where making a sound can get you killed from John Krasinski (Jim from The Office), is the latest film to qualify as one of the top “Go to the Movies” movies of the 2000s. That doesn’t necessarily make it one of the best movies, though it’s an excellent movie, also, but if it’s on your list to see and you’re thinking about waiting to see it at home (or you’re one of those people with the ability to illegally download movies currently in theaters… Shame on you, by the way!), you should clear your schedule and make time to see it where it was meant to be seen. A Quiet Place is one of those films that I can guarantee loses something outside of the cinema. Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: It’s almost worth it for Taraji P. Henson’s rage-filled performance. ALMOST! But not quite.

Tyler Perry’s latest is like lather, rinse, repeat. Critics hate. Audiences ignore. Money stacks. Hate, ignore, stack. That’s what Tyler Perry movies do. But is Tyler Perry’s Acrimony any good and would it be successful without the name on the marquee? The quality question is pretty easy to answer: Not really. While Tyler Perry’s Acrimony starts out with a lot of promise and features the talents of Taraji P. Henson in a relatively juicy role for her, the film unravels in the middle of the second act and never pieces it’s way back together. As for the other question, it’s likely Acrimony sans Tyler Perry would have had similar success at the box office since these relationship revenge flicks, especially featuring African American stars, have a way of banking at the box office.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: Every faith-based Biblical tale must have bright, slow motion scenes draped in classical-stylized instrumental music and Paul, Apostle of Christ is no different. Plus, it’s confusing as hell that Jesus is now Luke. 

I have to admit that I might not have paid attention to most of the first act of Paul, Apostle of Christ. My brain was struggling to process Jim Caviezel in the role of Luke in a movie where Jesus is talked about so prominently. Caviezel, you should know, was Jesus in Mel Gibson’s faith-based success The Passion of the Christ. For some reason, this casting decision didn’t sit well with me if only for the reason that it was so distracting to the actual film. It also could have been the laborious pace of the film which takes a while to get going as it covers the last days of Paul (James Faulkner) as he sits in jail falsely accused by Nero of burning down Rome. Writer/director Andrew Hyatt’s faith-based take follows similar patterns to other faith-based filmmakers and delivers a safe, surprisingly undramatic and somber telling of Paul’s final moments before his beheading at the hands of the Romans.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: Your typical bigger, louder and not necessarily better action sequel. However, Pacific Rim Uprising seemed to know what it was which was somehow very comforting.

At some point, someone will get the idea to adapt Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots into a feature-length motion picture. (If you’re doubting that as a possibility, see the abomination that is 2012’s Battleship.) Basically, though, it already happened with Pacific Rim Uprising, the unnecessary sequel to Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim which released to mixed reviews and mixed box office results in 2013. Poor attendance in the U.S. did not stop Pacific Rim from cashing in overseas leading to a $400+ million worldwide box office. Okay, maybe the sequel does make sense when you think of it in those terms. Guillermo del Toro was originally slated to write and direct the sequel but eventually, his script was scrapped and a new director, Steven S. DeKnight (for his feature film debut), was brought in. The result is a somewhat campy adrenaline rush of an action flick that knows it’s a somewhat campy adrenaline rush on an action flick. And that’s okay.Read More →

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In: 2018, Ranked, Weigh In

Thanks to a soft January, a cruise to the Caribbean and some other uncontrollable circumstances, it took a little longer than last year to get to 25 movies. There’s a good chance the 2018 pace will catch up to 2017 by June and typically, the best movies don’t come until the second half of the year anyway. (At this point last year, Logan, John Wick: Chapter 2 and Kedi were the top 3 movies of 2017.) While the box office doesn’t reflect it, ignoring Black Panther, of course, 2018 is shaping up to be slightly better than 2017 although the bottom of 2018 is shaping up to be a cesspool. Here’s the first batch of films from 2018, graded:Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: Like cat nip for critics. They’re going crazy over it but you can’t really figure out why. Funny, farcical satire that is better than average but falls short of the greatness some have bestowed upon it.

On paper, you can look at The Death of Stalin and instantly determine how it will be received. Critics will love it. It’s a historical satire with a hot writer/director (Veep creator Armando Iannucci) and the ensemble cast is loaded with critical darlings. Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor, Simon Russell Beale, Jason Isaacs, Paddy Considine, Rupert Friend and Michael Palin all score bonus points whenever they’re attached to a film. Well, maybe not Jeffrey Tambor so much anymore but everyone else. While critics will love it, audiences will like it but not reach the euphoric level of excitement the critics will. And while critics will love it and the audiences will like it, the film will essentially be box office poison outside of a small art house release. In its initial weeks, The Death of Stalin lit up box offices with a decent opening on 4 and then 32 screens. Now that it has reached 484 screens, the reception is cooling off. So, maybe it’s unfair to call a film of this pedigree that has already generated $4 million at the box office poison but it’s not going to require additional resources to count all the cash it rakes in, that’s for sure.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: This nostalgia stuffed adaptation of Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel can be fun at times but sometimes feels like the movie equivalent of a greatest hits album from one of the best directors of our time. Like a greatest hits album, it’s fun to experience but feels all too familiar to be anything better than good.

The trailer for Ready Player One is enough to tell you if you’re going to enjoy the full-length film. The 2 hour, 19 minute glimpse into a fictional dystopian future where the world has gotten lost inside a virtual world known as the Oasis is also an opportunity for director Steven Spielberg to flex his science fiction muscles which he’s not done much of in recent memory. Expectations for this film were indeed high and, in some ways, it delivered but, overall, Ready Player One falls short of greatness as the pop culture references and not the characters or the plot are what keep you entertained. By the third act, when the characters and the story become what’s most important, Ready Player One‘s shoddy stitching can no longer be hidden underneath all that nostalgic fabric layered over top of what essentially is a generic flick featuring a Mary Sue of a protagonist in Wade Watts and a relatively derivative storyline that not only borrows its references from pop culture but blends up some of the classic storylines we’ve seen in Sci-Fi and serves it up as freshly squeezed. Is that a hint of The Matrix that I taste?Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: It’s exactly what you’d expect from a YA romance in the same vein as a Nicholas Sparks film. The leads are charismatic enough to overlook some cheesy dialog and there’s even an unexpectedly good performance from Rob Riggle. 

If I’m being honest, I have a soft spot for the cheesy, fatalistic romance genre. Last year, I was especially high on Everything, Everything. The year before it was Me Before You. Midnight Sun is yet another one of those films. Driven by charismatic performances from Bella Thorne and Patrick Schwarzenegger (son of Arnold), Midnight Sun features a flimsy plot about a girl name Katie (Thorne) who has xeroderma pigmentosum, also known as XP, which is a disease that makes the ultra violet rays from the sun deadly. She can’t leave the house in the day, home schools with her widowed father as her teacher and basically has one friend (Quinn Shephard) as the rest of her community barely knows she exists. She’s obsessed with one of those community members, Charlie (Schwarzenegger) and when she runs into him at the train station one night soon after graduation, her life is forever changed. Read More →