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Hot Take: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies has a little bit of Austen, a little bit of gore and a little bit of humor that is occasionally dark and occasionally camp but none of those qualities come in large fulfilling doses and the movie fails to take on an identity. It’s not bad but not great.

Going into Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Could it be a true parody of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Could it be another zombie apocalypse flick using the 19th century novel for it’s backdrop? Will it be scary? Will it be funny? Will it be a love story? Well, somehow, it manages to be all of these things yet none of them at the same time. Read More →

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Hot Take: The Finest Hours proves one thing… I am a sap who has a soft spot for sappy, classic-style films.

Based on a true story, The Finest Hours takes some liberties with the retelling but, for the most part, is on target. (Not to get off track but why is it when Aaron Sorkin wantonly butchers reality in the name of art, we laud him but fail to do the same when someone else does it in the name of entertainment? Just wondering.) The film celebrates what is considered to be the greatest small-boat rescue in the history of the Coast Guard. In an effort to add some drama, the writer and director re-work the true love story slightly but do a reasonable facsimile of the rest of the true tale with some impressive looking high seas rescue scenes.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take, Trailers

Anticipation (Before Trailer): 60/100

Anticipation (After Trailer): 95/100

Don Cheadle might be the most underrated actor of our time. He is brilliant in Showtime’s House of Lies and has quietly amassed a solid library of film roles under his belt. Viewing the trailer for Miles Ahead, this might be Cheadle’s crowning achievement and the only disappointment is with a release date of April 1, 2016, even if he’s brilliant, movies released this early in the year rarely get the recognition they deserve.

Either way, this looks like it has the chance to be the first great movie of 2016.

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Hot Take: This might not make sense but the fact that The Boy wasn’t that bad actually made it less entertaining to watch. In previews, The Boy looked ridiculous and silly. Surprisingly, it was competent… and not very scary.

When I see a horror movie, I want to be scared to the point where I curse the film every time I mention it (F*** you, Poltergeist!) or I want it to be so over the top it’s kind of funny even though it’s about some maniac trying to kill everyone (see any Friday the 13th). Unfortunately, The Boy is an adequate attempt at horror which falls somewhere in the middle of these types of films. There’s a ridiculous plot that somehow comes together to make sense. There’s a decent amount of scary moments (usually pulled off by taken us into the protagonist’s nightmares) and it stays somewhat intriguing. Read More →

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Hot Take: Your standard genre movie. Slightly too good to be a TV movie yet not all that enthralling enough to warrant a theatrical release. Natalie Portman is good, the supporting cast is adequate and the story is OK. Jane misfires.

There was a time where Westerns ruled the cinema. Today, the Western is few and far between and it’s hard to count films like The Hateful Eight as a traditional Western (it’s hard to imagine John Wayne in a film as violent and crude as The Hateful Eight). For what it’s worth, Jane Got A Gun is awfully close to a classic Western in style. Unfortunately, despite it’s nostalgic feel, some of the film feels as if it lacks direction and while the film’s title indirectly promises a strong female character, Natalie Portman’s Jane ends up not living up to the billing.Read More →

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In: 2015, Hot Take

Hot Take: Charlie Kaufman makes more film school student/film critic porn and this time I’m not buying it.

Sometimes it’s great when a film makes you think. Sometimes it’s fun when a film gives you pause to reflect on your own thinking and wonder if you are fundamentally flawed. Sometimes a film can be therapeutic in the way it delivers a message. Sometimes it’s bullshit. Anomalisa felt more like bullshit. It’s interesting, watchable bullshit but it’s bullshit nonetheless.

Spoiler Alert: The rest of this piece will likely give away some of the film’s plot twists and break from the typical format of this site. This is a post about film school porn, after all.Read More →

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Hot Take: The latest in “What will Robert DeNiro do for money?” genre of movies. (Initially, I wanted to go with “Apparently, Robert DeNiro would allow someone to film him for 90 minutes in one of those Money Machines you see at a casino wearing only a thong with the blowers turned up to hurricane force as long as he was allowed to keep the cash and they kept refilling it if he grabbed it all” but felt it might be too long.)

Rather than spend too much time chastising Dirty Grandpa for it’s offensiveness (not really the content so much — which is very offensive — but it’s total disrespect for a human’s intelligence to accept this as entertainment), let’s talk about Robert DeNiro’s career choices. He’s done easy bad (Righteous Kill). He’s done lazy bad (Analyze That). He’s done ridiculously bad (The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle). He’s done reboot bad (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). He’s done “skip the theaters” bad (Freelancers). He’s done “Let’s make another shitty sequel and see if you still keep coming” bad (Little Fockers). He’s even gotten sucked into those “Let’s do an ensemble piece around a holiday” bad (New Year’s Eve). Sadly, I’m probably doing DeNiro’s shit list a discredit by leaving off a few turds. The saddest part of all of this is how easily an offensive, brutally lazy movie like Dirty Grandpa can make you quickly forget how good DeNiro was as recently as he was in The Intern and think maybe he’s done. He’s not… he just can’t say no.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: How to make watching The 5th Wave fun: Spot how many other movies it has ripped off and then give it a new title based on what you’ve spotted. Mine is called Buffy Potter and the Day After the Deep Divergent Twilight Hunger Maze of the Red Flies… They Live! What about yours?

The best thing about The 5th Wave will be the Honest Trailer it will give life to in the not so distant future. Actually, if you haven’t seen The Hunger Games franchise or the Divergent Series or The Maze Runner films or Twilight, The 5th Wave might be kind of okay. The film opens with an somewhat intriguing premise involving an alien invasion and some cool looking apocalyptic annihilation scenes but dissolves into every teen vs. adult action flick you’ve ever seen. In the end, The 5th Wave is mediocre (which is all you can ask for from a movie coming out in January, let’s be honest) but with a modest $38 million budget and existing source material — the movie is based on a trilogy of YA dystopian novels — it wouldn’t be surprising to see a sequel or two.Read More →

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In: 2016, Hot Take, Trailers

Anticipation (Before Trailer): 50/100

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjEusWO6VPg

Anticipation (After Trailer): 100/100

If you put a gun to my head and said I could only see one movie into 2016, it would be Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. But if you said I could see two movies, the second movie would be Keanu!

I’m not a huge Key and Peele fan but I’ve watched some of the better bits from their show on YouTube and found them extremely funny in small doses. Seriously, though, look at the cat! He’s a star in the making and will be all over your movie screen April 29, 2016.

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In: 2016, Hot Take

Hot Take: Yosemite struggles to fill 82 minutes. Despite heaping helpings of dramatic build-up, nothing ever really happens. When it does, it’s not very interesting.

Yosemite is one of the darkest films I’ve seen in some time. However, part of me wonders if it’s me that is dark and the movie is really about something else. Because of the deliberate, patient pace combined with the just below the surface darkness, the viewing is unnerving and allows for a lot of thought. That’s not to say the film is thought provoking. There’s too much left open to interpretation to credit it with being thought provoking. You have no choice but to think. Yosemite leaves you no other option.Read More →