Review: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’

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“Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” the seventh feature length film in this seminal sci-fi franchise, has the distinction of being the first of the series to be made without any involvement from the creator of the whole thing, George Lucas. And the irony is that director J.J. Abrams et. al. tried their absolute damnedest to make this movie feel as much like the original 1975 film as possible.

The story very simply involves an underground resistance group waging political (and actual) battles against a large evil force determined to take control of the whole galaxy. Some young rag tag folks meet up with an older wise man with a history against the bad guys, lead by a shadowy figure who communicates with his minions via hologram, one of whom is a fella dressed all in black with a black mask and a distorted voice whom every one else fears due to his Force powers. The rebels and the bad guys race against each other to get the same piece of information, which leads to a big space battle at the end involving a large planet-like space station slash world-destroying weapon. Also there is a stop at a cantina-like establishment filled with all sorts of aliens and creatures as well as a live band, and there are cute android antics.

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Review: ‘Krampus’

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“Krampus” fills that niche of holiday movies with a twist and does so pretty well, as mixing the tropes of your typical Christmas holiday movie with that of another, seemingly disparate genre (such as horror) can result in the kind of movie that satisfies two kinds of cinematic itches in one fell swoop. Like the raunchy comedy glazed with holiday sweetness that is “The Night Before,” here we have a movie about the real meaning of Christmas, but one that explores the consequences of forgetting that meaning, a mixture of the sincere with the horrific, a Christmas present wrapped in shiny paper and concealing something terrible inside. You know how it is around the holidays.

“Krampus” starts out like a Christmas dark comedy, kind of in the vein of movies like “Bad Santa” or “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” as the opening credits play out over scenes of people fighting each other during one of those Black Friday shopping rushes in which people get trampled and killed every year, showing how people have forgotten that holiday spirit and instead have turned this time of year into an ugly demonstration of excess, greed and an ungodly love for deep discounts on electronics. Then we meet our main characters, a well to do suburban family who have mostly become too busy to appreciate the holiday or more importantly each other, and like “Christmas Vacation,” they are visited by their extended gun-loving, redneck family with whom they do not get along, and all of their interactions together are awkward and do not end well.

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Review: ‘Brooklyn’

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Did you know that the name Saoirse is pronounced “Seeir-sha?” Well, now you do.

With that out of the way, “Brooklyn” stars Saoirse Ronan as an early 1950s young Irish immigrant, heading to America in search of a life better than the one she could have at home. This is a love story, but it is more than that as well, as our main character is in a state of transition and we see her start to realize some of her potential and find her place in the world.

Eilis (Ronan) starts out living with her mother and sister in Ireland, where she can’t get a job because the economy is rubbish and for whatever reason she can’t find a decent enough fella. Her sister pulls some strings, though, and Eilis finds herself on a freighter heading for America, where a job at a department story and a room in a boarding house await her. Initially she is miserable, as she has difficulty getting along with the other girls in the house and can’t stop thinking about home and how much she misses her family. But then she meets a nice dude (Emory Cohen), and she starts to get along with the people around her, and before you know it, she’s finally making a nice life of her own.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Creed’

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“Creed” is an amazing movie, if only because it is the seventh installment in a series of films that people thought should have ended over twenty years ago, and really this should have been a crappy movie, with a story thrown together by some hacks, put together all in the name of making a few extra bucks and exploiting the good will amassed by decades of previously successful movies. No one could be blamed for being cynical about this endeavor – even Sylvester Stallone was reportedly reluctant to agree to this movie because of how hard it was to make “Rocky Balboa,” a movie which itself works as a nice send off and closure to a film character and series that has been with us in pop culture since the mid 1970s. But Stallone eventually saw the potential, and he agreed, and now here we are with a sort of sequel spin off movie, featuring the son of a character that was never the main character of these stories and who died four movies in, and lo and behold, against all odds, this is not the cynical cash grab people initially feared but instead is a heartfelt, genuine, character-first drama, the kind of movie that made the original “Rocky” so popular to begin with, the kind of story that puts its characters ahead of the plotting and which gives us actual people to root for and identify with, and in the end, just flat out works.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Night Before’

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“The Night Before” is a Christmas carol type of movie for youngsters in their 20s and 30s who appreciate a good dick joke, but also appreciate the movie’s genuine appreciation for the holiday spirit. Like a mash up of “A Christmas Carol” and Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” this is a story that takes place all in one night but deals with our main characters’ pasts and futures, all the while Christmas Eve shenanigans go on all around them.

Sure this is a ridiculous comedy with plenty of drug references and R-rated jokes and, depending on your point of view, a bit of blasphemy, but at the center of it all is an honest little story of three men in their early 30s who find themselves at a transitional point in all of their lives, a point that could be causing them to drift further away from each other. Whether it be careers or growing families or just growing old, things can’t stay the same way forever and growth is needed, which is hard to do when one person struggles with the growth part.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Secret in Their Eyes’

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“Secret in Their Eyes” is the kind of movie that never fully clicks, despite having all the elements needed to be a good, if not great movie. A twisty-turny plot with a great cast all doing solid work, it all works as well as an extended episode of “Law & Order” but also ultimately feels just as disposable, and considering the subject matter, this trait isn’t a good thing.

Constantly jumping back and forth between 2002 and 2015, “Secret in Their Eyes” is the story of the rape and murder of a young woman and how this deviant act of criminality deeply affected a number of people directly related to this case. Counter Terrorism expert and FBI Agent Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) ignores the orders of his boss by spending his time investigating this murder instead of doing the counter terrorism work he was there for, and he does so because the victim is the daughter of his FBI Agent partner Jess (Julia Roberts). With a little help and encouragement from the foxy district attorney for whom he has the hots (Nicole Kidman), he does his best to solve the murder in 2002, and again in 2015 when he finds new evidence.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Spotlight’

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In the grand tradition of movies about journalism as well as whistleblowers, “Spotlight” is a remarkable movie not because of the salaciousness of the story details but because of how well those details and this story are handled. An even keeled and classy drama that feels right at home with similar dramas from the 1970s, we have here a movie that can be seen simply as a procedural but really does point to some more profound aspects of our day to day lives and how they are interwoven with larger institutions throughout our culture.

For years and years the idea of the child molesting Catholic priest has been around, to the point where people were fine with joking about it among themselves. And despite being “a thing,” it has persisted. This could only continue within a system that allows it to happen, discreetly of course. And as history has shown, the best way to deal with monsters is to drag them into the light. And that is exactly what happened in from 2001 through 2003, as the investigative reporting team of the Boston Globe made this their mission in regards to the Catholic Archdiocese and their consistent cover up of the sexual abuse of children in their own city.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2’

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“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” is finally here, bringing yet another film franchise to a close, this time the story of Panem, the land in which wealth disparity is the name of the game and open rebellion is all the poor people have left. After the episodic feel of the second movie and the incredibly boring wheel spinning of the third movie, we finally have here a movie with scenes featuring characters doing stuff, with final goals in sight and ultimate sacrifices ready to be made. It took several years, a number of films, and hundreds of millions of dollars, but we finally have a conclusion, an ending, a sense of finality…but was it all worth it?

In this final film we pick up with Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) and the rest of the rebellion, planning their final missions that will have them secure weapons for their final assault on the Capitol, in which they will attempt to overthrow the dominant paradigm by ousting cruel President Snow (Donald Sutherland) and making Panem a free country with open elections…you know, good old democracy. But just as Katniss has been a reluctant participant in the rebellion, offering her services as the face of the rebellion mostly due to her hatred of President Snow, in this last movie she openly questions the actions of the rebels, who are willing to kill many civilians in order to advance their own cause. She sees the horrors of war firsthand and she recoils. She would rather everyone just worked together to take out Snow and be done with it, but war isn’t easy, and the rebellion gets messy, and she doesn’t like it.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Room’

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“Room” is a tense little character drama expertly made in every way, a raw, emotional movie that tells a tough story and freely digs deep into a nightmarish scenario that we all know is far too common and which we try not to think about very much. This is the type of movie that reminds us about what kind of terrible things happen out there in our world, and how there are people going through tremendous hardships and how amazing these people can be in their very basic quest for survival. Sounds like fun, no?

And despite being heavy, “Room” is not a depressing movie, it does not beat you over the head and force you to feel bad for some people, but instead in a way it manages to reinforce our more positive feelings about humans and our will to live and what we would do for each other. Yes this is a story about a person who has been suffering terrible abuses for years, but it is also a story about motherhood and the connection between a parent and child and how this can be one of the strongest bonds in the known universe.

Ma (Brie Larson) lives inside a small windowless room, with only a skylight far above providing any natural light, and the rest of the walls and ceilings covered in sound-proofing foam. In this room she has everything – a toilet, a bathtub, a tiny kitchenette, a television, a bare minimum of supplies basically – and this is because she can never leave the room. She is locked in, an electronic keypad keeping the door shut, with supplies being brought to her by some creepy guy named Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), who tells her how lucky she is to have someone like him to bring her stuff, all while he’s taking off his pants and climbs into bed with her.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Spectre’

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Here we are again, watching and reviewing yet another James Bond movie, this time in the form of “Spectre,” the follow up to the hugely successful and well liked 2012 movie “Skyfall,” and not only did we get a returning Daniel Craig as Agent 007, but director Sam Mendes came back as well, bringing with him his sense of craftsmanship and detail which has made the last two Bond movies the best looking and most technically accomplished of them all. Lush, gorgeous and epic, “Spectre” arrives as the biggest and most expensive Bond movie ever, but did that necessarily translate into a “good” Bond movie?

For some reason, there are many out there who are really down on this movie and kind of hate it. A glimpse at Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic shows a very divided response, with people who didn’t like “Spectre” expressing that they really didn’t like it. Do these people not remember “Die Another Day” or “Quantum of Solace” or the entirety of the Roger Moore era, which culminated with one of the worst big budget movies of the 1980s, “A View to a Kill?” I’m not going to say that “Spectre” is the best of the entire series, and I wouldn’t even say it’s the best of the Daniel Craig Bond movies (cause it ain’t) but this movie is hardly worthy of derision. If anything, it delivers a lot of the classic Bond tropes that have been largely missing for the last few films, while maintaining the more serious edge of these post-Brosnan movies, so while the movie does indeed have a stumble or three here and there, it is mostly quite good and still nails what makes Bond movies fun as well as what makes these Craig-led movies different from the rest.Continue Reading …