Saw a decent amount of movies in the past month or so, here's a recap.
Fences
As expected, great performance by Denzel Washington, but Viola Davis has the best performance of the movie and she’s easily the front runner for the Oscar for Supporting Actress. The movie itself is simple and reminds me of another play to movie effort in August Osage County. The scenes with conflicting characters were the best and I wish there was more of that. If you like dialogue driven movies with great acting, this one is for you.
Moonlight
Overall, a really great movie and I think either La La Land or Moonlight will take Best Pictures at the Oscars. Moonlight is broken into three section, with the first being a solid A, the second being a A-/B+ and the third being a B-/C+. If everything was as engaging as the first act, this would be easily the best movie of the year. But still, this is a great movie with amazing performances, good direction and score.
The Handmaiden
This was like a good hybrid of Gone Girl, Kill Bill and Blue is the Warmest Color. As I went in completely blind, this was a very entertaining movie with one of the most engaging plots of the year. There were solid performances all around and the visuals are amazing. There are a few very graphic scenes and some dark humor and gore sprinkled around. Pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed this movie and it will find a place on my Top 10 of the year.
Moana
In terms of animation, this is one of the best in the last 10 years or so. Moana is visually beautiful and it will look amazing on blu ray/4k. The story was too simple and predictable for my taste, but the two main characters were well developed. Although there was no song as catchy as “Let It Go”, the overall music in Moana was beautiful and well-rounded. Not an elite Disney movie, but very solid and worth seeing in theaters with kids.
Passengers
The premise for this movie could have been great, but ultimately this was very predictable and clichéd. The chemistry with Pratt and Lawrence was decent, but the futuristic world they were in was more interesting than their characters. And supposedly highly anticipated love scene between them didn’t hit on any levels to me. There are some nice visuals and ideas, but this is a rental at best.
Assassin’s Creed
This movie made the mistake the live action Transformers movies keep making. They keep limiting us on the world/scenes we want to see. For Transformers, most people want to see the actual Transformers and not the human character/plots. For Assassin’s Creed, the flashback/past storylines are 10x more interesting than the current storyline. But for some reason, we are tortured with the current storyline about 75% of the time. If they reversed those percentages, this movie could have been much better. Any flashback scenes were great, but not much else in this movie.
XXX: Return of Xander Cage
Good and bad news. Good news, this is probably the best XXX movie out of the three and has some of the best action. Bad news, the movie is still overall pretty bad. The first 10 minute and last 20 minutes of this movie are great with Donnie Yen really stealing his scenes. The middle is like a crappy B version of the Fast and the Furious with worse acting and a terrible storyline. But if you’re like me and don’t mind dumb action, go see this movie.
Ghostbusters (2016)
Good and bad news here too. Good news is this is the best looking Ghostbuster film in terms of effects and the action is decent. The bad news is everything else is pretty bad. The jokes did not work for me at all, which is shocking because of the talent on screen and off are normally comedic gold. But they really made this to be an action comedy and if the comedy doesn’t work, it leaves the heavy lifting to the action, which was okay at best. If you like this type of humor, you will likely enjoy this movie way more than me, but this movie did not work for me and I’m hoping for a funnier, more creative sequel in the future.
Jack Reacher 2: Never Go Back
I thought the first Jack Reacher was decent to good. It had some cool moments, but it was definitely not as good as Cruise’s MI series or the Bourne series. Jack Reacher 2 was average to below average to me. It did nothing better than the first and added a pretty annoying character and subplot to the series. Not enough action and the script was not smart or clever at all. Still worth a rental if you’re a Cruise fan or a Jack Reacher completist.
The Machine has a slipcover????!!!!! Are we talking about the same movie? The one with Caity Lotz and the dude from Black Sails? I might go for that 15 hr drive to TB after all! I don't think i have ever seen the slip for The machine. It was another obscure movie that i was impressed with.
