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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: To See or Not To See

According to MTV, Melissa McCarthy is a “Comedic Genius” and will be showing off that genius this week. At the very least, she might send the Son of Krypton and Bat of Gotham out of the top spot at the box office. We”ll see if she shows Batman and Superman who the boss really is this weekend.  We also have a first-person shooter (wait… that’s a movie?), a Jake Gyllenhaal movie which means I have to Google how to spell “Gyllenhaal” and Anna Kendrick as that character Anna Kendrick plays in pretty much every movie she’s been in before. All that and box office predictions for the weekend of April 8th:Read More →

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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: To See or Not To See

A polarizing sequel and a parody no one asked for go wide. Four platform releases including Richard Linklater doing to ’80s college what he did to ’70s high school in Dazed and Confused, Don Cheadle as Miles Davis, your bi-annual chess fix and an off-the-wall satirical look at the ’40s detective flick. All that and MHT’s box office projections (We know Batman v Superman will be #1 again but how far will it drop?) for the weekend of April 1st… no foolin’!Read More →