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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: An attempted launch of a new franchise, the first “Mitch Rapp” novel-to-cinema conversion feels like a dud… a very violent, uneven been-there-done-that spy thriller. Are the books this generic?

The hope for American Assassin was probably the second coming of Jason Bourne… which was basically the second coming of James Bond… which has re-invented itself multiple times thanks to a change in the lead role. Hope is not a strategy though and, unfortunately, American Assassin‘s strategy to launch a franchise behind the Mitch Rapp character who is featured in 15 novels by Vince Flynn looked to stay inside the lines when it comes to spy thrillers with the only risk being to turn up the violence a notch or two. The result is a very disappointing initial film which fails to deliver on the promise of a best-selling novel series and is in the possession of one of the biggest plot holes I’ve seen in recent cinema history. (Maybe the novel has the same plot hole? That would be disappointing to find out.)Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: I’m not sure I get it but I’m still thinking about mother! 2 days later and in my book, that’s a great accomplishment for a movie.

Film students will write papers on mother! someday. Maybe this week. Writer/director Darren Aronofsky will be called a lot of things for what he crafted. Ambitious, audacious, vile, thought provoking, pretentious, provocative, contemptuous, shocking, original, disgusting… the list goes on and on. Not all the words are positive. There’s no way I can unequivocally recommend mother! Look at the Audience Score (44% right now) on Rotten Tomatoes. There’s a pretty good chance you’ll watch mother! and hate it. There were times while watching mother!, I wanted to hate it. A few people even walked out of the showing I went to. After some time to contemplate and really settle on what I thought the film was about (It’s not abundantly clear), I loved this piece of art. It may have been the weirdest mind fuck of a film since 1998 when I watched David Lynch’s Lost Highway but it was a journey I will likely take again and enjoy all of the nuances I missed while being bombarded from all sides during the first viewing. (For the record, I hated Lost Highway the first time I saw it and now it’s one of my favorite 100 films.)Read More →

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In: Hot Take, Trailers

Hot Take: Somewhat entertaining mediocre movie about a drug dealer who falls in love and tries to get out of his old life.

Teri Woods was working at a law firm in Philadelphia in 1992 when she finished her first novel, True to the Game. Eager to publish, she submitted her work to publishers and was repeatedly rejected. Finally, in 1998, she self-published and hand delivered copies to local Philadelphia booksellers. This helped Woods launch Teri Woods Publishing and also made the urban fiction novel True to the Game a cult hit. Somehow, though, it took another 20 years for the film to make it to the cinema. The low budget adaptation has its ups and downs and never really achieves more than mediocrity but there are a lot of positive things to be said about a movie like True to the Game and how a movie with almost no marketing budget and a limited production budget can find its way to the big screen and likely turn a profit.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: If movies were edible, Home Again would be comfort food. 

In 2014, Reese Witherspoon’s role in Wild earned her a 2nd Academy Award nomination. 9 years prior, she won for her role in Walk the Line. Both films represent a more serious side of Witherspoon. Even though Witherspoon has established herself as an excellent actress who can tackle serious roles, her most recognizable roles have been in romantic comedies. Outside of her voice work in a few animated films, the movies to bank the most box office were Sweet Home Alabama, Four Christmases, Legally Blonde and it’s sequel. The one thing Hollywood has been void of lately is a cheesy romantic comedy sometimes referred to as a chick flick. As the roles for women have opened up and there’s been proven box office success in women in roles dominated by men *COUGH* Wonder Woman *COUGH*, the romantic comedy hasn’t played as important of a role in the box office as it had previously. There’s been a void almost. Home Again, the latest from Reese Witherspoon and first from Hallie Meyers-Shyer who is the daughter of Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, It’s Complicated, The Intern), is a perfectly viable option to fill that void. Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Well told fact-based tale of Colin Warner, an 18-year-old from Crown Heights in New York who is wrongfully convicted of the murder of a teenager in Flatbush, Brooklyn and sentenced to life in prison told in the most positive way a story like this could be told.

The central storyline of Crown Heights is heartbreaking. Colin Warner wasn’t even in the wrong place at the wrong time in 1980 when he was fingered by an eye witness as the murderer of a teenager he never even met. Unfortunately, his mug shot made a photo lineup and once the police had a suspect, Warner’s life changed forever. In the film, Warner is played by Lakeith Stanfield and we spend most of our time with Warner behind bars as not only was Warner wrongfully arrested, tied to the actual murderer in court, Warner was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the murder while the actual murderer received a shortened sentence because he was a minor.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: Formulaic horror sequel with a longer fuse than most. Sometimes the slow burn is good. Sometimes it’s a waste of time. Annabelle: Creation is the waste of time.

As mentioned in the It review, horror is not my genre of choice. Sequels aren’t really my thing, either. They are a necessary evil in the world of cinema and a staple of the current box office. Annabelle: Creation checks both the horror and sequel (well, prequel) box as David Sandberg (Lights Out) brings the prequel of a prequel (Annabelle was a prequel of The Conjuring) to life in an effort to capitalize on the inexplicable box office success of the first film — the original pulled in $256 million on a $6.5 million budget. For this reviewer, Annabelle: Creation felt like your standard horror flick with a few extra helpings of jump scares and extended stares into darkness waiting for something to happen. Something usually happened but it became more and more predictable as the film progressed.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

Hot Take: A blend of horror and a coming-of-age story that allows you to forget, at times, that you’re watching a horror movie, only to bring you right back to the frights of the classic King tale.

I watched Stephen King’s It when I was 14. The two-part four-hour miniseries frightened the hell out of me. I never liked clowns and It did our relationship no favors. Even with the fright factor, the miniseries was one of my favorite Stephen King adaptations. I’m not much of a horror fan but, for some reason, the King brand of horror is right up my alley. Needless to say, the release of It was wildly anticipated by this guy. Fortunately, the newest version — focused on the kids-only chapter of the novel and miniseries with a different, more CGI-aware horror and an R-rated vulgarity not allowed for broadcast TV — while different, is in most ways better than the 1990 version and lived up to lofty expectations.Read More →

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In: 2017, Hot Take

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 →