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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: The feel of a blaxploitation action flick of the 70s but with a total lack of anything really worthwhile to deliver anything entertaining.

Taraji P. Henson has made it! After her phenomenal work in Hidden Figures amongst others, Henson has been given a role in a terrible action picture. It’s like a rite of passage for A-list female stars. At some point, a Hollywood studio realizes an A-list female should be in an action film but then decides to give her nothing to work with and totally waste the talent. With Proud Mary, a pseudo-retro action yawn released in January which almost always spells disaster, Henson is about the only thing to stop and take a peek but no one would begrudge you if you bail before the ridiculous and obligatory third act shootout which has barely an ounce of realism.Read More →

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In: 2018, Hot Take

Hot Take: It’s 2018. Why are people still fucking with Liam Neeson’s family?

If you’re a movie villain, at this point, shouldn’t your bad guy dossier have a picture of Liam Neeson in it with some sort of instructions to avoid his family at all costs? The Commuter is proof positive that this is very much not the case as Neeson plays a former police officer turned insurance salesman who is laid off and approached by a mysterious woman (Vera Farmiga) on the commuter train he takes every day to hypothetically do “one little thing” and receive $100,000. The premise is Neeson’s Michael will find a target on the train, place a GPS tracker on them and walk away. Simple enough, right?Read More →

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Hot Take: A little weird. A bit pretentious. Oh and kind of boring, too. Daniel Day-Lewis gives his usual great performance but that’s about it.

Phantom Thread, the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson and supposedly last from Daniel Day-Lewis who has stated he is retiring from acting, is one of those films that attempts to be more art than movie. The danger of Phantom Thread is if you don’t find yourself absorbed by its unconventional story the end will land rather flat. Heavy, meticulously crafted, visibly dense and odd, Phantom Thread is demanding of its audience as it takes the road less travelled to a macabre third act that is likely to be make or break for the viewer’s satisfaction of their experience. For this viewer, it never got there and I never felt completely invested in the film to care how it ended despite the ending itself piquing my interest more than the rest of the highfalutin tale of a clothing designer and his romantic interest.Read More →

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Hot Take: A worthy Best Picture nominee that’s a showcase for Gary Oldman who gives arguably the best performance of his life as Winston Churchill.

It would be unfair to call The Post “Oscarbait” but not tag Darkest Hour with the same criticism. Both films rely heavily on themes that have a track record of success with the Academy in garnering Award nominations and a worthy cast. That being said, Darkest Hour is more transcendent than The Post and it’s also a showcase for Gary Oldman, one of the greatest actors of our era who is given a chance to domineer the screen with his larger than life performance as Winston Churchill during the ascension of Churchill to the position of Prime Minister at the height of the German expansion during World War II. It’s basically a 2+ hour highlight reel of Oldman’s ability to command a role from beginning to end and one of his most complete and transformational performances. Read More →

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Hot Take: It’s a coming of age film but there’s an uncomfortable age difference between the two love interests. It’s over long at 132 minutes and verbose in its embrace of young love and experimentation. 

I remember watching Luca Guadagnino’s last film A Bigger Splash and thinking how overindulgent it was. His latest, the critically acclaimed coming of age Call Me By Your Name, wears the overindulgent monicker like a badge of honor. There’s also the age difference between Timothee Chalamet’s 17-year-old Elio and Armie Hammer’s Oliver whose age is never identified but even if the 31-year-old Hammer is portraying someone 5 years younger than his actual age, that’s still a 9 year difference between the two romantically linked leads. Sexual ambiguity is abound here also as the young Elio has sexual encounters with man, woman and fruit (yes… peach to be more precise) throughout this 132 minute sexual journey.Read More →

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Hot Take: The faux documentary is even funnier because it’s a real faux documentary, if that makes sense. As darkly comic as last year’s The Bronze but thanks to a more worthy (and real) subject matter, it sticks the landing.

Is I, Tonya being condescending to its main character or sympathetic? After watching, it’s very easy to draw the conclusion that it’s being both as the Tonya Harding biopic we never knew we wanted but absolutely needed deftly chooses to not pick a lane and tell the story from all angles. I, Tonya tries to piece together the wildly different tellings of the Tonya Harding story from multiple perspectives culminating with the infamous attack on skating rival Nancy Kerrigan. Director Craig Gillespie does an excellent job of balancing all of the stories as pieced together by “wildly contradictory” interviews done about Tonya’s life and times leading up to the incident. Read More →

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Hot Take: Damn you, Pixar! Yet another tug at the heart strings from the makers of Toy Story, Wall-E, Up, Inside Out and unexpected emotional breakdowns during animated films.

Pixar hasn’t just mastered the art of animation. They’ve also mastered the ability to take what’s essentially a kid’s genre and make it all ages fare and consistently provide enough emotional ammunition to bring even the most closed off curmudgeon to tears. (Although that’s not me… I’m a pretty easy mark.) Coco is the latest in Pixar’s arsenal of films that are usually technically perfect, family oriented and ready to bring you to tears before the credits roll. In typical Pixar fashion, Coco is both inspirational and heart-breaking and delivers all the feels you’ve come to expect from the master animators. Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Oscarbait account of The Pentagon Papers. Highly competent newspaper tale along the lines of Spotlight without the emotional weight.

Take a true story. Add Steven Spielberg as director. Add Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks as the stars. Add a number of competent supporting cast members including Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, Tracy Letts and others. Throw in a score from John Williams. Tie it to the current political climate and some similarities to the past and you have a film capable of scoring an Oscar nomination or two. The Post, a historically accurate account of the publishing of The Pentagon Papers from the point of view of The Washington Post and a subplot of Kay Graham (Streep) as the first female president and publisher of an American newspaper, is high octane Oscarbait and received 6 Golden Globe nominations which could be a sign of things to come for The Post come the announcement of Academy Award nominations next week. Read More →

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Hot Take: Guillermo del Toro is a visionary and Sally Hawkins is brilliant but there’s just something that keeps The Shape of Water from being great. 

Currently, I rank The Shape of Water as the 16th best film of 2017. While that is nothing to sneeze at, The Shape of Water is expected to be nominated for Best Picture and some think it should win. It’s hard for me to get behind the notion. While The Shape of Water has a ton going for it, there’s something about it that just doesn’t quite make it feel worthy of such accolades. Sure, Guillermo del Toro is a brilliant director with amazing imagery but we’ve seen Beauty and the Beast before so the story at its core isn’t too fascinating. Even with a renewed mistrust of Russia thanks to recent political events, the added twist of a covert U.S. operation surrounding torturing an exotic find in a South American river during the Cold War in a Baltimore government facility just doesn’t, pardon the pun, completely hold water. It’s what you come to expect from del Toro who does dark fantasy so well but when thinking about it in terms of Oscar, it feels like it comes up just a bit short.Read More →

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Hot Take: Another great showcase for Jessica Chastain… even if they might have started resembling each other.

Last year, Jessica Chastain starred in Miss Sloane. Personally, I thought she should have been nominated for her performance but didn’t think it was going to happen because the film wasn’t critically acclaimed. She carried that film and elevated it from good to very good (almost great) status with her performance alone. At the time, John Madden’s Miss Sloane was occasionally referred to as “Sorkin-esque” albeit written by Jonathan Perera and directed by John Madden. So, this year’s Chastain entry to Awards season feels a lot like last year’s entry as Chastain carries much of the film as the titular character in Molly’s Game (although she gets more help from supporting cast member Idris Elba than anyone who appeared in Miss Sloane) and this year’s movie is actually written and directed (in his directorial debut) by Aaron Sorkin. Read More →