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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: If you like Melissa McCarthy, you’ll probably enjoy The Boss. If you don’t or you’re looking for something more than a toilet paper-thin story filled with gags, crude language and pratfalls, stay far away.

If you can’t figure out how the story of The Boss will play out after watching the trailer and the first five minutes of the movie, you haven’t seen enough movies. In addition to being predictable, The Boss is vulgar, crude, full of pratfalls and inappropriate humor. That predictability reduces the film to a few memorable comedic moments that produce some hard laughs scattered through the movie’s 99 minutes. Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Demolition is either a film you connect with or don’t and there’s very little middle ground. I connected.

The most disappointing element of Demolition (as with many recent movies) is the trailer. There’s nothing wrong with the trailer, actually. When I saw it six months ago, this quickly became the most anticipated pre-summer release of 2016. However, the amount of information revealed in the trailer hurts the movie as you walk in all too prepared for the opening scene. By the time it happens, you feel numb to it all. Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take, Trailers

Anticipation (Before Trailer): 99/100

Anticipation (After Trailer): 100/100

Is it December 16th yet? The teaser trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story filled in the very, very small amount of doubt that this franchise was in good hands.

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In: 1968, Hot Take

Hot Take: Ambitious, ahead of it’s time, influential, controversial, hypnotic, majestic. 2001: A Space Odyssey is all of those things. Pretentious, long winded, dreadfully slow, ambiguous. 2001: A Space Odyssey is all of those things, too.

Occasionally, there are movies that somehow get by me. At least since 2001: A Space Odyssey came out almost eight years before I was born, I have a little bit of an excuse. Fortunately, I was able to catch the movie in theaters as my first viewing as it’s always better to see a movie in theaters the first time.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Some excellent performances are buried in this banal telling of the life of Hank Williams. If you ever need a Wikipedia page in visual form, I Saw the Light might be it.

Somewhere toward the middle of the second act, after losing interest yet again in this poorly written, choppy mess of a biopic, I decided to read the Wikipedia page of Hank Williams. Actually, Williams’ Wikipedia page had a little more depth than I Saw the Light but the story that unravels on screen basically runs down the highlights on his page and not much else. The film barely scratches the surface of the man that was Hank Williams and because it spends so little time on any one aspect of his life, this Williams biopic is an exercise in marginalizing. As big as Williams’ accomplishments in music were, the story spends very little time dwelling on this or any other aspect of his life. Instead, it’s a 2 hour, 3 minute extended montage.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: An intense, compelling test of your moral compass. Eye in the Sky puts you through the ringer and doesn’t let anyone off the hook, especially the viewer.

For a dialogue-heavy film about drone warfare, Eye in the Sky moves at an unexpectedly frenetic pace. It drops so many moral and ethical dilemmas in your lap, it adds a layer of depth to the white-knuckled thriller you rarely see. As all sides weigh in, you’ll likely find someone to agree and disagree with and they might even be the same character. It’s well-rounded, even handed and ambiguous with imagery that will stick with you.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: About as ridiculous, ugly and unintelligent as you’ll find. Oh and not funny, too!

When you see a movie like Meet the Blacks, you find yourself asking, “How does this get made?” Taking a look at the releases already backed by Freestyle Releasing and you see they’ve set the bar low. In the last 12 months, their most successful release was The Letters — a Mother Teresa biopic — which struggled at the box office. They also released two of the bigger bombs to hit theaters with the animated Hell and Back and The Masked Saint — a Christian wrestling flick. Oh, and there was Zombeavers, too! Yeah, the bar is THAT low.
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In: 1981, Hot Take

Hot Take: Very good, fun, action-packed original with a compelling central character. Iconic. Not great though.

When I was 5, Raiders of the Lost Ark was amazing. It was released the day before my 5th birthday and while I don’t remember when I saw it first, I know it was in theaters and my recollection is having the highest praise a 5-year-old could have for it. I loved the movie and couldn’t wait for more. When I was 15, it was still fun but Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was a better movie and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade had a better story. Still, it was the first and nothing can take that away. In my early 30s, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull came out and really made me respect what we had with the first three films. Now, with a planned Indiana Jones 5 and an opportunity to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen again, I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity. (That and my only new first run feature to see was Kung Fun Panda 3.)Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take, Ranked, Trailers

Now that we’ve moved on from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, what is there to look forward to seeing this April? There are at least 25 24 films slated for release in the month of April and here’s the trailer for all of them, ranked by anticipation:

1. The Jungle Book (April 15th)

The original animated version of The Jungle Book had an estimated budget of $4 million. The live action version in 1994 cost $27 million. This bundle of CGI goodness was shot in downtown LA and none of the film was shot on location so even though there’s no released budget information, another increase of 7 times the ’94 budget wouldn’t be surprising.

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: A lesson in knowing your audience and delivering a safe, satisfying sequel. If you were on the fence or didn’t like the original, you’ll probably completely tune out here. It’s nostalgic, warm and fuzzy.

It’s doubtful anyone was waiting patiently for a sequel to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Yet the premise of the sequel and it’s timing make complete sense within the storyline. Unlike Zoolander 2 which was stuck in development hell for years and then crammed the delay into the plot, the gap between original and sequel was deliberate in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (probably a lesson learned from the horrible television spin-off) and worked out well within the story.Read More →