Tag Archives: Movie Reviews

Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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No matter what the last few years of hype might have told us, bringing Star Wars back was always a risky move. It might seem like our current nostalgia-based pop culture consciousness will turn anything new that happens to be based on something familiar into an instant smash. But there’s always the chance that audiences might rebel, upset with the way their beloved stories have been altered, or fans and casual viewers might split, leading to endless debates over the “true” nature of the franchise. So despite the fact that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is poised to break every box-office record imaginable, gathering rave reviews from critics and viewers alike, and will likely catapult Star Wars, Disney, and a cast of faces both old and new to the highest of heights, the question still remains: is it any good? Put simply, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Almost 40 years after the series debuted, and over 10 years since its last entry, The Force Awakens is without a doubt the film that fans were screaming for. In fact, Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the single greatest work of fanfiction ever made.

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Review: The Good Dinosaur

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The Good Dinosaur had a rough journey to the big screen. Its release date was pushed back twice, and at some point in its production it was reimagined and rewritten, with an entirely new cast as well as a new director and producer. But even worse than that, it has the misfortune of having been released in the same year as Pixar’s brilliantly creative and original Inside Out. By comparison, any film would feel dull and ordinary, and The Good Dinosaur is doomed to live in Inside Out’s shadow. But while The Good Dinosaur may be simple or even predictable when held up next to Pixar’s other work this year, it remains an excellent film in its own right. It’s a solid, classic coming-of-age story, with a fun twist, all wrapped in the kind of emotional storytelling and gorgeous filmmaking that Pixar does best.

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Review: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2

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mockingjay_part_2_posterMockingjay, the final book in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy, always felt unfilmable to me. It broke drastically from the formula of the previous books, with no true Hunger Games as a part of the plot, covering instead a vast, complex revolution through the eyes of a damaged, broken, hopeless teenager. It was epic in scale yet filled with intimate, intense, but often internal emotions. It required basically reintroducing the audience to the universe, now filled with entirely different situations and concerns than of which we were aware in the first two books. And to cap it all off, it was one of the most dark, tragic, violent, and depressing finales to a beloved sci-fi series in recent memory. So the fact that The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 not only works as a cohesive narrative, but is about as good a film version of an unfilmable book as possible, is praiseworthy, even if it struggles at times under the weight of its own story as well as immense expectations.

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Review: Spectre

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Bond is back once again for his 24th film, with the unenviable task of following the most successful entry in the 50 year old film series. Skyfall was a hit in every measurable way, and it helped in many ways to finish Daniel Craig’s three film James Bond origin story that began with 2006’s Casino Royale. It introduced Moneypenny, Q, and gave us a new M, all while answering the question of whether the world still needs James Bond at all. The latest film, Spectre, piggybacks off this partial reboot, giving us the first Bond film of the Daniel Craig era that actually feels like a “James Bond movie,” while still bringing some new twists to the tale. Spectre is a film filled with ties to the past, whether Bond’s personal history, the storylines that began with Casino Royale, or the legacy of the franchise itself, but it also has an eye to the future of both the character and the series.

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Review: Bridge of Spies

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When is a spy movie not a spy movie? Bridge of Spies has all of the trappings of a spy movie, espionage, hidden communications, interrogations, secret identities, a race against the clock, and worldwide consequences hanging in the balance, but it’s as far from a “spy movie” as you can get. Instead, Bridge of Spies is a film about spies. Steven Spielberg has teamed up once again with Tom Hanks (with a script by the Coen brothers) bring us a true story from the height of the Cold War, a story of subtle legal and political maneuvering with the fate of not only two spies but two nations hanging in the balance. The result is a tense, thrilling, yet beautifully quiet film that focuses on the human element of international espionage, and the way the lives of those who only wish to serve their country are used or discarded as situations change.

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Review: The Martian

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Every movie critic wants to stand out from the crowd. There’s a joy that comes from trashing a highly popular film, and a righteous pleasure from praising a film that was critically panned or generally ignored. But lauding a film that’s cheered by both critics and moviegoers feels a little superfluous, as we’re telling people what they already know. Nevertheless, here I am to tell you that The Martin is just as good as critics and audiences alike have proclaimed. It’s a tense, dramatic story of human ingenuity and the will to survive that feels like a mashup of Apollo 13, Gravity, and Cast Away, but funnier and generally more fun than any of its predecessors. The result is a film that takes tried and true storytelling tropes and makes them feel fresh and entertaining, all anchored by a standout performance from Matt Damon, making The Martian director Ridley Scott’s best film in over a decade.

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Watching Aladdin with a Fresh Set of Eyes

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IMG_6059We all have movies we know by heart, that we’ve seen so many times they become akin to comfort food. Perhaps you pop in the DVD when you don’t know what else to watch, or when you’re doing something else and want it to play in the background. When you’ve watched something enough, the experience of watching turns into one of remembering, tuning out the present and filling the time with your memories of the very thing you could be experiencing. Aladdin was one of those films for me which I’d watched so many times I no longer needed a TV; I could just close my eyes and replay it perfectly in my head. (I distinctly remember watching the VHS three times in a row once when I was home sick from school many years ago.) But I recently got the chance to see it on the big screen for the first time in 23 years and it felt like I was seeing it with a fresh set of eyes. Time and experience can change our perspective or deepen our understanding of a film, but we so rarely take the opportunity to come at things from a new angle and recapture the sense of magic that has been softened by familiarity.

As a way to mark the upcoming Blu-ray release of Aladdin, Disney’s D23 fan club allowed people to vote on which cities would get to host a one-time screening, and luckily for me Phoenix was selected (along with Seattle and Sacremento). Continue reading →

Review: Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

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It’s very telling that I can remember almost nothing from the plot of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, yet I enjoyed every minute of it. From the film’s opening moments, where it sends Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt up into the sky hanging from the side of a cargo plane in one of the series’ trademark insane stunts, Rogue Nation is a gripping thrill ride, and things like plot, story, and character development be damned. Now on its fifth film, the Mission: Impossible series has evolved and changed over the past nineteen years through a rotating slate of directors, with Cruise’s guiding presence the only true constant, and it seems the series is finally hitting a consistent stride. In jettisoning everything extraneous to the adrenaline rush with which the films hope to jolt the audience, this franchise has become all about the action, and the evolution suits it. Mission: Impossible may only offer half of the James Bond equation for espionage thrillers, but it does so with humor, style, and exciting stunts that make it an excellent way to spend a weekend afternoon with a tub of popcorn by your side.

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Review: Ant-Man

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Ant-Man shouldn’t work.  Just from a conceptual standpoint, a hero who can shrink and who hangs around with insects sounds a little goofy when compared to the exploits of the Avengers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  This isn’t Asgard or SHIELD and there’s no army of alien invaders or HYDRA soldiers with which to contend, so how could it ever feel as important or impactful as other recent Marvel films?  Add in the drama over the loss of the film’s original writer/director (and strongest advocate) Edgar Wright, and the resulting film could have been an inconsequential mess, throwing a goofy idea together with a handful of jokes and some cheesy action just to be another cog (about a straight, white male, of course) in the Marvel/Disney machine.  That Ant-Man succeeds at all is a testament to the creativity of Marvel’s storytelling and the strength of its cast, but more than that it’s perhaps Marvel’s most flat-out fun film to date.

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Review: Inside Out

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Why do we think what we think and feel what we feel?  What determines who we are and how we respond to life’s circumstances?  How can the same memory be joyous sometimes and sad at others?  Where do ideas come from?  What happens to the things we’ve forgotten?  Why does the jingle from that chewing gum commercial always get stuck in your head?  Why are dreams so weird?  Just what, exactly, is going on in people’s heads?  These are some of the many questions Pixar’s latest film, Inside Out, sets out to explore.  The result is one of the most charming, heartfelt, and poignant films the studio has ever created, as well as one of the most creative movies of all time.  It will not only make you laugh and cry, but then it’ll make you stop and consider why you just laughed and cried.

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