Frozen II (Quick Review)

Frozen II is one of those strange examples where a lot of stuff occurs yet it feels like very little happens.

The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Quick Review)

When there’s a family film focusing on a kid or kids, nine out of ten times the kid(s) will not be its selling point.  Sometimes it’s the premise, other times it’s the adult actors starring alongside the kids, and occasionally it’s both.  The House with a Clock in Its Walls is among the middle group.  Jack Black and Cate Blanchett—both endearing actors to me, yet not until now did I realize how much I wanted them together in the same film.

First Man (Quick Review)

To sum the film up: space scenes are cool, personal life scenes not so much.

The Meg (Quick Review)

Shark films are definitely one of my popcorn pleasures.

Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (Quick Review)

The Hotel Transylvania series reminds me of the Madagascar series in that it’s steadily grown on me with each new film made. I had a lukewarm response to the first Hotel Transylvania, while Hotel Transylvania 2 improves upon its predecessor in all areas to be an unexpectedly enjoyable sequel.  Now comes Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, quite possibly the series’s best film to date.  The film is the equivalent to a long Saturday Morning Cartoon—containing all the wacky antics, cartoon physics and idiot ball moments you’d expect, but in a good way.  The film isn’t trying to take itself seriously or be logical (the series never has), it’s just out to have a grand, silly time and entertain with a variety of fun hijinks and colorful, likable characters.

Skyscraper (Quick Review)

Skyscraper is in many ways a hybrid imitation of the 1984 action thriller Die Hard and the 1974 action disaster The Towering Inferno.  It is also an inferior film to both its predecessors.  That said, Skyscraper is still a mildly enjoyable popcorn flick if you don’t expect anything more than what its trailers present.

Tag (Quick Review)

Tag has a premise so completely ridiculous—five friends (played by Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, and Hannibal Buress) that have continued a game of tag for over thirty years—it’s bound to provide entertainment.  And so Tag does, though not to the extent I was hoping for.  I absolutely hate when I must type such statement in a review; “____ is good, but not as good as it could have been”.  I want a film to be fully realized and I want to praise it for such accomplishment—but sadly, films often fall short of what they could have been.  Here, Tag suffers from two aspects: energy and focus.  

Adrift (Quick Review)

It’s great to once again watch and review a good Shailene Woodley film.  The actress possesses remarkable talent, yet since late 2014 has been tangled in a web of bad films (mostly Divergent sequels) where such talent is stifled by shoddy scripts and stories.  Adrift breaks free from the web, giving Woodley her first good film in nearly four years.

A Wrinkle in Time (Quick Review)

What a mess.

Annihilation (Quick Review)

Annihilation is a bizarre blend of surreal, existential examination of life and a survival horror popcorn-flick.  The film’s premise is typical of its genre: a group of stock characters are sent on a dangerous mission and are gradually taken out by beasts and mutations until it’s down to a sole survivor.  Yet the film’s straightforward plot is mixed in with an eerily unsettling, horrific even, yet captivating exploration towards evolution.  Annihilation is far from what I consider an avant-garde film, yet too unorthodox to be a conventional survival-horror.

Phantom Thread (Quick Review)

Paul Thomas Anderson began directing in the 1990s with his debut film Hard Eight.  Since then he’s released a film every one to several years, each distinctly different in tone, atmosphere, and genre.  I love Anderson’s work from the 90s, and I love his work from the 2000s.  The 2010s, however, have only been adequate.  I’m not certain what exactly happened, but his work during this decade dropped in quality—still good films, but far from what they use to be.  Interestingly, all of Anderson’s films from the decade—2012’s The Master and 2014’s Inherent Vice—starred Joaquin Phoenix and were the only ones to do so (could Phoenix have been a possible bad luck charm?).  Yet Phoenix is nowhere to be found in Anderson’s latest feature Phantom Thread—instead replaced by Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role, whom Anderson previously worked with in his masterpiece There Will Be Blood.  Phantom Thread is certainly Anderson’s best work since There Will Be Blood (further adding fuel to my Joaquin Phoenix being a bad luck charm theory), and while the film is not on the level of Anderson’s 90s-2000s work, it certainly is a step in the right direction.

Wonder (Quick Review)

Wonder was not a film I expected to surprise me.  One view of its trailer and I had a preconceived notion as to what it would encompass.  I was uncertain whether such content would be effectively handled by its makers, but nonetheless knew what to expect plot-wise.

Except I was completely wrong.

The Disaster Artist (Quick Review)

When you hear the term “so bad it’s good”, everyone has their own go to film.  Perhaps it’s Plan 9 from Outer Space or Birdemic: Shock and Terror.   For many including myself, however, we first and foremost think to The Room—a film so bafflingly, wonderfully bad one may believe it was done so on purpose.  Yet it’s not, despite what its director otherwise claims, and perhaps even more mystifying than The Room itself is the man behind its creation.  The Disaster Artist, based on the biographical book of the same name, details the odd relationship between Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) and Tommy Wiseau (James Franco) and the events that led to their creation of The Room.

The Shape of Water (Quick Review)

Every year, there’s at least one critically acclaimed film that I find to be, at best, decent.

These are the worst kinds of films to review.  The Shape of Water is such a film.

The Night Before (Quick Review)

Why the hell did I not see this film in theaters!?

Midnight Special (Quick Review)

Author’s Note:  This review was written back in 2016, yet I never got around to releasing it—hence explaining the contradictory criticisms towards Adam Driver despite Paterson making such claims null and void.

Nocturnal Animals (Quick Review)

The premise to Nocturnal Animals is simple enough.   Susan (Amy Adams), a high-class art gallery owner living a shallow life receives a novel from her estranged ex-husband Edward (Jake Gyllenhaal) titled Nocturnal Animals—a nickname he used to give her.  The novel is a gruesome thriller, detailing a humble, weak-willed man’s (also Jake Gyllenhaal) life being destroyed by one unfortunate encounter—paralleling Edward’s own destroyed relationship with Susan.  The plot is understandable, but I still have no clue what its opening is all about.  Talk about an R-rated big-lipped alligator moment.  It comes out of nowhere, is absolutely bizarre, stays for an uncomfortably long amount of time, and is never talked about, nor mentioned again.

Columbus (Quick Review)

Columbus has a distinctly similar feel to Lost in Translation.  Both films follow two characters—a middle-aged man and a young adult female—experiencing a personal crisis in their lives.  By chance the two characters meet and begin interacting, growing closer in an ambiguously-romantic relationship set in an aesthetically pleasing region.  Now comparing Columbus to Lost in Translation does not mean Columbus is on Lost in Translation’s level—but to be fair, I never expected such.  Lost in Translation is both my favorite film of the 2000s and one of my favorite films of all time—Columbus being on its level would have been quite the remarkable achievement.  Nevertheless, Columbus succeeds as a very good story with some visually gorgeous cinematography.

The Mountain Between Us (Quick Review)

I cared more about the dog’s survival than the romance.

Dave Made a Maze (Quick Review)

I really appreciate a film like this.  It gets right to its nonsensical premise—no setup, no backstory, no logical explanation, just a story about a guy who builds a giant, magical, deadly cardboard maze because he was bored.