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Hot Take: Too low-key to be anything better than okay. Jaeden Lieberher is the best actor in Hollywood under the age of 15.

The Confirmation doesn’t do anything special on screen to warrant too much excitement. Clive Owen as Walt, a working class father living paycheck to paycheck who has his son for the weekend, delivers a very good performance. Young Jaeden Lieberher as Anthony, Walt’s son who doesn’t know much about his dad other than what his mom (Walt’s ex-wife Bonnie played by Maria Bello) has told her, continues to be the best young actor in Hollywood. The pair have great chemistry. The supporting cast — Bello, Stephen Tobolowsky, Patton Oswalt, Tim Blake Nelson, Robert Forster, Matthew Modine, Spencer Driver — all add to the movie. The directorial début of Bob Nelson is adequate. However, there’s something missing from The Confirmation to really get you out of your seat with excitement.Read More →

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Hot Take: I’m not sure Mr. Right was a good movie but it was a lot of fun.

There’s a lot of things you can say about films written by Max Landis. Usually, boring isn’t one of them. The Landis’ penned Mr. Right is uneven, ludicrous, over-the-top and silly. It’s also a lot of fun and bolstered by the chemistry of Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick who make the most of this rom-com meets action thriller. Sure, we’ve seen this before. John Cusack and Minnie Driver did it in Grosse Pointe Blank 19 years ago and did it a little bit better but Mr. Right is fun from beginning to end and well worth the 96 minute investment.Read More →

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Hot Take: Visually enthralling, narratively dull. Eventually, even the visuals reach overload and the movie pot pie that is Alice Through the Looking Glass becomes possessed by other films.

Let’s start with the positive. Alice Through the Looking Glass is nowhere near the disaster it is being made out to be. People have been rooting against the follow-up to the overly successful and poorly received Alice In Wonderland since it was announced. (The details of Johnny Depp’s personal troubles and accusations of domestic violence surely didn’t sway the pitchforks and torches in another direction, either.) However, Alice Through the Looking Glass isn’t one of the worst movies of 2016. It’s just not good.Read More →

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Hot Take: Heroes in a snore shell.

What happens when the nostalgia wears off? The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had a run of three films in the ’90s and was followed by an animated movie before the 2014 reboot. (I’m mercifully leaving out the Coming Out of Their Shells tour where the TMNT became a band.) With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, the turtle brothers have now made more trips to the big screen than Transformers. (The Transformers have probably been on screen more than the Turtles since each Transformers movie is roughly 6-7 hours long in my estimation.) At this point, I think any points TMNT earns for bringing back someone’s childhood are exhausted. Now, it’s all on whether or not the latest incarnation of TMNT is any good. Unless your having trouble sleeping, this one is pretty useless.Read More →

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Hot Take: Anti-climactic pile of who gives a crap. Regression starts with promise and ends with a thud.

This cop thriller/Satanic horror/psychological suspense starts off okay. With Ethan Hawke, Emma Watson and David Thewlis on board, it already starts ahead of the curve.  Writer/director Alejandro Amenebar — the writer/director behind Abre los Ojos (the foreign film Vanilla Sky was based on) and The Others — comes with cache, too. So, what the hell happened?Read More →

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Hot Take: Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping would have been funnier 5 years ago when it was more relevant and might be funnier 5 years from now when it takes on a more timeless feel but right now, the shit just feels kind of played. Lots of swings, plenty of misses but a few comical parts hit home runs and even a couple of them weren’t in the trailer!

There’s two things that struck me regarding Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. While watching Andy Samberg and The Lonely Island (a trio completed Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer) do their thing, it was hard to find the relevance in the mockumentary. Sure, it’s a spot on riff of Justin Bieber’s Never Say Never from 2011 but it’s 2016 and now it has the same stale aftertaste of a pack of crackers eaten after their best by date. Adding to the irrelevancy is a cast of cameos that feel better placed closer to the beginning of the decade or, in some cases *COUGH* SEAL! *COUGH* maybe the previous one. That’s not to say it wasn’t funny. It was often funny. It would have worked so much better if it had better timing and came at a time where it had more relevance. Justin Bieber has moved on to much more ridiculous behavior to make fun of… keep up!Read More →

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Hot Take: If your idea of entertainment is listening to a silent crowd of teenage girls sobbing, Me Before You is can’t miss! If not, it’s still pretty good. Emilia Clarke = Pure Delight.

Admittedly, I’m only vaguely familiar with Emilia Clarke. I barely remember Terminator: Genisys (other than her poor chemistry with Jai Courtney) and have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones. After seeing the Me Before You trailer back in February, I was tempted to binge watch the show just to see if Clarke was as magnificent as she appeared in the original trailer for this film but I didn’t want to set my already unrealistic expectations for this movie any higher.Read More →

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Hot Take: With quick wit and masterful timing (and Kate Beckinsale’s best performance of her career), Love & Friendship is one of the funnier films of 2016.

“I’m not going to like this,” I thought during the opening moments of Love & Friendship. The pace of Whit Stillman’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan is unexpected and catches you off guard. It’s like waking up in a car going 70 miles per hour after falling asleep poolside on a lazy afternoon. Thrust right into the story, we’re bombarded with characters who will provide depth throughout the film but are introduced with such rapid fire succession (and through title cards), your head starts to spin. Don’t worry. The feeling passes. Eventually.Read More →

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Hot Take: Bloated. Overstuffed. There’s a lot of wasted time in this 2 and 1/2 hour superhero flick. Two or three great scenes can’t make up for a movie we’ve already seen in some way, shape or form already.

Bryan Singer is an excellent director. He’s done incredible things with the X-Men franchise. However, after seeing X-Men: Apocalypse, it’s hard to not wonder if he really has anything new to say. Maybe it’s writer Simon Kinberg who has had a sporadic history with writing X-Men films. (He also wrote Fantastic Four so it’s tempting to cast aspersions on him.)  There’s not a ton of originality in X-Men: Apocalypse and with two seasoned X-Men vets at the helm, pointing the finger in their direction isn’t a ridiculous conclusion, is it?Read More →

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Hot Take: This was the Mother’s Day film that should have made $10 million plus at the box office.

Each month, Movie Hot Take ranks the most anticipated movies of the month. In April, The Meddler ranked 21st of 25 releases. When The Meddler was the only first run film left in theaters to see, the only thing I was looking forward to was overpriced popcorn. Despite the reservations and the total lack of excitement in anticipation of seeing this film, The Meddler ended up being a surprisingly worthwhile and enjoyable movie with well-written, very real characters and a cast — headlined by Susan Sarandon as Marnie — that does an excellent job bringing them to life.Read More →