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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: What a mess! Nowhere near as bad as last year’s Fantastic Four but with an eerily similar feel. Suicide Squad is the most disappointing mediocre film since, well, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Suicide Squad had such promise. The trailers were about as good as trailers can be. The cast assembled for the film had plenty of proven talent with a track record of making excellent movies. Writer/director David Ayer wasn’t a sure thing but has plenty of watchable flicks on his resume to give you confidence he could pull this off. Despite the excellent marketing, cool concept, solid cast and competent writer/director, Suicide Squad fails to deliver the goods. Read More →

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Hot Take: Of course it’s awful. How could it not be? The question was never, “Is this going to be bad?” It was, “Why would anyone make this in the first place?”

If you choose to see Nine Lives and whine about how bad it is, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you’re too young to remember the switch movie craze of the late ’90s and early 2000s, you’re probably just the right age for this movie and won’t dwell too much on trying to figure out what kind of gambling debts Kevin Spacey must have to pay off to take such a role. If you are old enough to remember those movies, you probably were left wondering if this movie came out of a time capsule. At one point I was expecting the 90s to call and ask for their movie back.Read More →

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Hot Take: I was kind of half bored, half fascinated by the whole thing.

Woody Allen’s Café Society is well written and loaded with more than capable performers who efficiently bring the writing to life. Not only do the bigger names — Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Parker Posey — sparkle but the less recognizable members of the cast — Jeannie Berlin, Corey Stoll, Ken Stott, Anna Camp and others — also deliver performances that enhance what amounts to a rather small but entertaining film.Read More →

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Hot Take: Viggo Mortensen is fantastic in this twisted family drama with a polarizing plot and thought-provoking story.

Captain Fantastic has a rather scrupulous plot about a family headed by Ben (Viggo Mortensen) who lives in the deep woods of the Pacific Northwest. Ben is focused on turning his six children into book smart, athletic survivalists who can do everything from recite the U.S. Constitution (and debate its merits) to set a broken bone. Ben’s wife has bipolar disorder which is what brought the family to the forest years ago in the first place but early in the first act, while receiving treatment at a hospital, she kills herself. Against her wishes, her parents decide to give her a traditional Christian burial (despite the fact she is now a Buddhist) and her father (Frank Langella) bans Ben and her children from the funeral.Read More →

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Hot Take: One of those movies you kind of love or kind of hate but in neither instance do you feel that strongly about it. Slick but hollow and the climax reveals just how thin the plot is. Oh and why can’t Hollywood find teenagers to actually play teens?

What starts as a slick, hip thriller devolves into a preachy almost whiny sermon on the dangers of the anonymous internet. It should come as no shock the film is directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, the creative minds behind the documentary Catfish and the subsequent MTV series. While Nerve is based on a 2012 novel by Jeanne Ryan, Schulman and Joost’s paranoid fingerprints are all over this one. The paranoia of the anonymous wasteland that is the Internet isn’t the movie’s fatal flaw, though, as it actually helps propel the suspense. However, by the final act, the preachiness is so thick it buries the best qualities of the film and turns the movie into one big missed opportunity.Read More →

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Hot Take: Ridiculous (in a good way) and hilarious (in an even better way). It’s not perfect but Bad Moms is that funny summer comedy you’ve been waiting for.

Comedy is an odd, deeply personal experience. In the theater, it can be largely affected by the crowd you see it with. My viewing of Bad Moms played to a room full of slightly intoxicated men and women who all seemed to hit the Regal Movie Theater bar before taking in the preview night showing. For viewing purposes, this played into the movie perfectly as the audience (myself included) was laughing loudly from beginning to end.

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Hot Take: A fun ride. It occasionally embodies the spirit of the original, sometimes delivers some freshness to the concept and from time to time gets bogged down with cheesy, cheap effects. It’s imperfectly not bad.

With all the negative hype around the Paul Feig all-female reboot of Ghostbusters, it was hard not to be intrigued by the movie. The trailers weren’t as bad as the YouTube backlash they received but they weren’t great, either. The casting of Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones in the primary roles was an excellent decision but tough to compete with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson. Read More →

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Hot Take: Star Trek Beyond is one heck of a ride. The pace and humor balance the stakes which, as always, are incredibly high. It’s a blast.

In a summer full of unnecessary sequels and reboots, Star Trek Beyond is both a sequel and reboot that finds a way to rise above that feeling of pointlessness and delivers an experience that is loads of fun and very different than any previous Star Trek but, at the same time, very familiar. It also pulls off the rare feat of making a 2 hour run time fly by to where you only realize how long it is when you look at your watch as the credits roll. Read More →

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Hot Take: A generic low budget horror story with some cool visuals that placate our fear of the dark. Not scary enough to force me to keep the lights on though.

In no way, shape or form are you getting opinions from a horror aficionado at Movie Hot Take. While I definitely enjoy a good scare from time to time, it is not the genre of choice when it comes to movies. That being said, 2016 has been an especially weak year for horror films. Outside of The Witch, there really hasn’t been anything worth mentioning in the top half of 2016 movies unless you count Green Room as a horror movie. Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Great performances, interesting story but we’ve kinda sorta seen it before. Good but too “by-the-numbers” to be great.

Bryan Cranston is a supreme talent. For the most part, it’s his portrayal of Walter White in Breaking Bad that we remember him for. Although his other TV role — as Malcolm’s dad in Malcolm in the Middle — was also an impressive role. In movies, Cranston has taken on bit roles more than anything. Up until last year’s Trumbo — a role which garnered Cranston an Academy Award nomination — Cranston didn’t land too many starring film roles. In The Infiltrator, Cranston is back in the starring role as Robert Mazur and again, Cranston turns in a marvelous performance.Read More →