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Hot Take: When Allied is good, it’s really good. Too bad it wasn’t good that often.

How often does a Robert Zemeckis movie miss the mark? The last big swing and miss from Zemeckis was probably What Lies Beneath in 2000. Okay, to be fair, I don’t think Allied missed the mark completely. However, the period romance about intelligence officer Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) and French resistance fighter Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) who fall in love during an assassination mission in French Morocco during World War II, has some low lows despite some high highs. Read More →

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Hot Take: I’m not sure what emotion Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk was trying to evoke but I’m positive leaving the viewer feeling nothing was not the goal.

Admittedly, I’m an emotional movie watcher. I got a little touched watching Trolls last week. So, when a movie like Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a film about a 19-year-old soldier (Joe Alwyn) on a tour of the U.S. with his fellow soldiers lauded as heroes after surviving an attack during the Iraq war that left their Sergeant (Vin Diesel) dead, left me feeling nothing, I was surprised. How could a movie with access to so much low hanging fruit completely miss the mark?Read More →

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Hot Take: Mediocrity was not what I expected out of an offshoot of the Harry Potter series.

Am I interested in what happens next in the story of Newt Scamander and his fantastic beasts? Sure. The last 45 minutes of rather lengthy origin story saw to that. However, this isn’t the franchise restart I expected when Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was announced as the successor of the Harry Potter franchise. The 132 minute origin story drags in places and while the fantastic beasts sparkle with personality, the latest slew of characters added to the world of wizards and magic created by J.K. Rowling don’t have the same appeal as Harry, Ron, Hermione, Dumbledore, Hagrid and the others we’ve left behind in the Harry Potter series.Read More →

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Hot Take: Am I being too critical of The Edge of Seventeen because the trailer led me to believe the film would have a different tone? Maybe.

Things got away from me this month and there was not a November preview of potential movie releases. The Edge of Seventeen would have been one of the most anticipated releases. The trailer was one of the funniest of the year and set expectations on the film that turned out to be unrealistic given the film’s approach to what essentially was a coming-of-age high school dramedy about the struggles of being a socially awkward teen.Read More →

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Hot Take: I get why you might think Hacksaw Ridge is a great film but Mel Gibson’s affection for graphic violence knocks this incredible true story down a peg from great to good.

I’m not really sure why Mel Gibson thinks we need to see every dangling body part or every dripping appendage caused by the results of a horrifying battle during World War II. I get it. War is hell. People got hurt, disfigured, lost limbs and died during battles. However, Gibson’s obsession with showing us every detail (right down to the rats eating away at the corpses on the battlefield) feels almost sadistically pornographic for someone with an obsession with graphic violence. Considering this is the same director who delivered Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, maybe graphic violence is an obsession for Gibson. For this movie, it becomes a distraction as you’d like the center of attention to remain on its remarkable main character, Private Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), but find yourself focusing on the scenes of death and dismemberment which dominate the third act.Read More →

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Hot Take: The happiest movie I’ve seen in years. Then again, how can you not be happy if you poop cupcakes and fart glitter?

It’s a dark time in America. An Internet troll is about to be sworn into the office of the President. His chief strategist is a white nationalist accused of anti-Semitism. Nepotism will likely put his family in important positions of government influence. He’s even put a climate change denier in charge of his EPA transition team. Does he even know EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency? That’s like making Charles Manson the warden at his prison. Myron Bleeping (this is a review of a kid’s movie, after all) Ebell… are you kidding me? Read More →

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Hot Take: Awful.

I’m not one to go overboard about the evaluation of film quality via Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer. However, when a movie is at 0% after receiving 18 out of 18 negative reviews, there’s something there. Shut In hasn’t fared much better from audiences, either. As of November 16th, the Audience Score sits at 23% liked. Read More →

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Hot Take: Smart and Sci-Fi go together so well. This cerebral exercise in life beyond ours is beautiful.

I’ve been a fan of director Denis Villeneuve for some time. 2013’s Prisoners was one of the best movies of that year and last year’s Sicario made my top 10 for 2015. This put Arrival on the “highly anticipated” list for 2016. It’s safe to say Arrival pays off with a smart, emotional Sci-Fi experience that focuses on “us” and not “them” with “them” being the alien visitors that turn our world upside down and put tensions on high alert. The movie isn’t about the aliens so much as a deeper look at the world and how we might handle such a crisis.Read More →

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Hot Take: The best comic book film of 2016.

Walking into Doctor Strange, I expected to hate it. I remember the comic book and was never that impressed. I’ve always been lukewarm in my response to Benedict Cumberbatch, too. I’ve also expressed my displeasure with the overload of comic book films in recent history although I did rank Captain America: Civil War and Deadpool fairly high and am excited at the prospect of a Black Panther movie and a Spider-Man reboot to be completely transparent. Needless to say, though, the odds of me enjoying Doctor Strange weren’t very high walking in.Read More →

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Hot Take: The worst Tom Hanks movie I’ve ever seen. And I saw Bonfire of the Vanities.

Inferno was so bad, I have effectively wiped out most of the film from my memory. It’s a completely forgettable third installment of the Robert Langdon trilogy on a downward spiral from the adequate The Da Vinci Code to the less than adequate Angels & Demons and now Inferno. Read More →