Movie Review: Tenet

Tenet is the 11th film that Christopher Nolan has directed. It stars John David Washington as The Protagonist, an American operative given a mission to stop the end of the world. Scientists discover that some objects are moving backwards in time through a process called inversion and it is The Protagonist's job to determine what is causing inversion and needs to stop it. Basically, Tenet is Nolan's version of a Bond film. The Protagonist gets help from a sidekick named Neil (Robert Pattinson) and they jet set all over the world, from India to Estonia to hanging out off of the coast of Vietnam, to take down a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh)- who is using a McGuffin to destroy the world- with help of the oligarch's beautiful wife (Elizabeth Debicki). 

I could go into the plot further, but the story of what happens in this movie is so damn confusing, that it's basically better to visit the r/Tenet Reddit thread to figure out what happens. The first third of this film is all confusing exposition dumps of people sitting down and talking to each other and the rest of the film sees characters going forward and backwards through time yet partaking in the same events. The whole film is needlessly elaborate and makes for a frustrating moviegoing experience.

I normally love Christopher Nolan films and don't generally mind his long-winded attempts to explain the rules of the film. The first third of Inception is also basically full of exposition dumps, but Nolan found a way to entertain the audience while clearly explaining the rules. He fucking flips an entire city on itself! I also don't mind if the film is confusing and messes with the concept of time, when again, Nolan clearly communicates that in the movie. Tenet follows a lot of the same rules of Memento. But whereas Memento firmly establishes how to watch the film and what it is (the present day scenes are going in reverse chronological order intercut with the main character talking on the phone about Sammy Jenkins), Tenet is a narrative mess. Everything does make sense and loop together as Reddit has confirmed, but the film itself doesn't convey that well. I don't mind a Nolan film that doesn't explain itself fully upon a first viewing and requires multiple rewatches, but it needs to be entertaining and make somewhat sense the first time around. Tenet does not. 

Movie Review: The Devil All The Time

Even during a pandemic, the tech titan Netflix has been consistently churning out original content. Now that Labor Day has come and gone, now is the time of the year where that original content is prestige, award-hopeful films. With Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago 7 and David Fincher's Mank coming later in the year, and past the release of Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, this past week saw the release of Antonio Campos' The Devil All The Time, a southern gothic epic starring basically every young and talented white actor working nowadays, such as *takes deep breath* Tom Holland, Bill Skarsgard, Sebastian Stan, Riley Keough, Jason Clarke, Harry Melling, Haley Benett, Eliza Scanlen, Mia Wasikowska, and Robert Pattinson. 

The film spans two generations during the 1940's through 1960's in the American South as the film is about the cyclical and generational cycle of religion and violence. Early in the film, Bill Skasgard's Willard, a soldier in the Korean War, comes across a fellow soldier that has been tortured and crucified. Willard comes home from the War with PTSD (never explicitly said, but shown through Skarsgard superb acting). A nice fellow, but clearly haunted by both his religious past and his overseas experiences. We see his tendencies, both pure and evil, passed down to his son Alvin, the older version of the character is played by Holland, ostensibly the film's lead but feels like he doesn't show up until two hours into the film. Along the way we meet Charlotte (Benett) who eventually becomes Willard's wife and Alvin's mother, Alvin's step-sister Lenora (Scanlen), Lenora's mother Helen (Wasikowska), Helen's pastor beau Roy (Melling), a cop named Lee (Stan), Lee's sister Sandy (Keough), Sandy's husband Carl (Clarke), and a flashy snake-in-the-grass preacher named Preston Teagardin (Pattinson). 

100 Greatest Films of the 2000's

As we recently saw the end of one decade and the start of another, I decided to write my 100 Greatest Films of the 2010's article. After I completed that article, I was inspired to write my 100 Greatest Films of the 1990's post, as I personally think it was one of the greatest decades ever for the art form. As such, we are here so I can discuss the greatest films of the 2000's (films released from 2000 through 2009).

I was initially hesitant to do this list because I felt the decade didn't seem to stand for anything. In some ways, I found this to be true. The 1990's saw the rise of Independent Cinema and thus an overall increase in quality of films released. The 2010's saw the exact opposite of that approach with major studios spending more and more money on bankable franchises. The 1990's saw the rise of auteurs and the 2010's saw the rise of Disney with Marvel and Star Wars franchises dominating the decade. The 2000's were a transition between these two decades. The quality of prestige and Oscar films seem to drop as franchises started to gain steam. The 2000's not only brought us Iron Man, the literal start to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it also brought us franchises like Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Dark Knight. Further, the quality of prestige and Oscar-worthy films seemed to dwindle in the 2000's. The 1990's gave us a murderer's row of excellent Best Picture Oscar winners such as Schindler's List, Unforgiven, and Forrest Gump. Even if the best film of the year didn't win the ultimate prize (as is often the case), the winner still felt deserved and had a long tail thanks to the quality of the film (for most of the decade's winners). The 2000's saw a drop in that as the decade went on. I purposefully left off many Oscar nominated and winning films in exchange for more interesting choices. 

That being said, the 2000's did give a rise in two areas: documentaries and comedies. The 1990's saw a rise in making cheap narrative films, and the following decade used that approach to make a wave of compelling documentaries. Starting with Michael Moore 2002's instant classic Bowling For Columbine, the 2000's gave us great doc after great doc. This list by far and away will have the most documentaries than either of my prior two Top 100 lists. Further, this decade saw the rise of Judd Apatow and Adam McKay. Anchorman was released in 2004 and The 40 Year Old Virgin was released in 2005. Both were critical and commercial hits which allowed the filmmakers to ascend to their apex to direct and produce even more comedy gold throughout the decade. 

Lastly, I found the 2000's to be the deepest list out of the three Top 100 movies lists that I have done so far. The 1990's were so good that I struggled to leave off good films from my Top 25 and felt that a handful of films outside my Top 10 would have been in it in any other decade. The 2010's weren't quite as strong, but I did feel confident in this films I chose for the top. However, with both lists, I felt that the Bottom 25 were fine, but not great films. I felt the opposite with this 2000's list. I don't feel the top is very strong, but struggled to leave off great films from making the Top 100. Again, this is part of the reason this list doesn't include many prestige and Oscar winning films. 

As always, I tried to make this list as objective as possible. Check out the introduction to either of my previous two lists to see how I tried to do that. Further, this post is organized like my 1990's post - at the top is the decade's Top 25 films, each one with a personal essay about it by me. As to not spoil the surprise, these films are ranked 25 to 1. Then, the remaining 75 films are ranked and listed while interwoven with a handful of mini lists such as the Greatest Documentaries of the Decade, the Greatest Animated Films of the Decade and the Greatest Comedies of the Decade That Didn't Make This Top 100 List. 

So without further ado, here is the list of the 100 Greatest Films of the 2000's:

Oscar Movie Review: Dunkirk

Dunkirk
Written & Directed By: Christoper Nolan
Starring: Mark Rylance, Tom Hardy, & Kenneth Branagh
STARS: 3.5 out of 4

SHOULD I WATCH IT: Rent it immediately and watch it on the biggest screen with the best speakers you can find.

Brief Description: Dunkirk begins with a group of young soldiers scavenging their way through an abandoned village next to the shore of Dunkirk, France during WWII. Flyers drop upon stating that the enemy has them surrounded. The young men suddenly come under attack leading two of them to the shore of the shore of the beach where they encounter an entire British battalion as they attempt to escape from Hell.

Dunkirk follows three main story lines as the United Kingdom tries to rescue these men and get them off of this beach. The first story line follows Tommy (Fionn Whitehead) and George (Barry Keoghan), two of the soldiers we met in the first scene, as they meet up with Alex (Harry Styles- who's surprisingly excellent in the film and who's fame works to the film's advantage to help distinguish between the random white kids we're following) as they spend a week trying to get off of the beach. Next, we follow Mr. Dawson (Rylance) and a group of rag tag civilians who spend the day boating across the English Channel in a last ditch effort to save the stranded, beached soldiers. The final storyline follows Farrier (Hardy) and Collins (Jack Lowden), two English fighter pilots spending an hour in the air to assist in the rescue mission any way they can.

Oscar Movie Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Written and Directed By: Martin McDonagh
Starring: Francis McDormand, Sam Rockwell, & Woody Harrelson
STARS: 2.5 out of 4

SHOULD I WATCH IT: Only if you're an Oscars completionist. Otherwise, wait to rent it for the performances.

Brief Description: Mildred (Francis McDormand) is driving along a rural road outside her house when she sees three abandoned billboards. She spends the last of her money to take out ad space on the billboards so that they read "Raped While Dying", "And Still No Arrests",  and "How Come, Chief Willoughby?'. As Mildred's teenage daughter was raped and murdered a few months back without any arrests or leads to show for it, Mildred creates these billboards to cause a stir in her sleepy little town and to get her daughter's case back into the public eye so that Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson) can re-open the case and, hopefully, solve the mystery for this grieving mother.

Oscar Movie Review: Get Out

Get Out
Written and Directed By: Jordan Peele
Starring: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, & Bradley Whitford
STARS: 3.5 out of 4

SHOULD I WATCH IT: 1000%. It's currently streaming on HBO.

Brief Description: I've seen Get Out three times and it gets more brilliant upon each new viewing. Ostensibly, the film is about Chris (Kaluuya) meeting the parents of his girlfriend Rose (Williams) for the weekend in upstate New York. However, that's just a jumping off point for the twists and turns that occur for the oddest weekend of Chris' life. You think Get Out is a standard film about a Black man meeting the parents of his White girlfriend, and then something strange will happen. Chris steps outside in the dead of night for a cigarette and finds the black gardener running straight for him, only to turn at the last moment and you realize he's just running laps in the backyard. The black maid doesn't seem quite right either. There's something a little off about her. In fact, everything about the weekend just seems a little off. The plot will eventually come together in the Third Act (and upon multiple viewings; it's definitely worth a re-watch), but you won't know what the hell is happening in the most glorious way possible until then.

The Lobster Movie Review

“What’s worse: to die of cold and hunger in the woods, to become an animal that will be killed and eaten by some bigger animal, or to have a nosebleed from time to time?”

This is a question posed by The Limping Man, played by Ben Winshaw, to the main protagonist David, played by Colin Ferrell in the Indie film The Lobster. The film itself, written and directed by Greek film maker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), is an odd, satirical take on relationships, and is summed up perfectly by the question posed by The Limping Man. It’s weird, it doesn’t quite make sense, yet it’s truthful to how we should view courtship and love.

In the film, all adults must be in a committed relationship, and if you’re not, you are sent to a hotel where you have 45 days to find a mate. If you fail to do so, you get turned into an animal of your choice. Some people refuse this model, and live as loners in the woods, only to be hunted by the people in the hotel in an attempt to earn extra days staying at the hotel. Desperate to find a mate, The Limping Man gives himself nosebleeds in order to connect to a young woman who naturally gets nosebleeds often. Based upon this physical attribute, the two are set up as a match to be paired together forever. When questioned about his lie by David, The Limping Man gives the aforementioned response.

Disney Almost Erases Decades of Misogyny with Zootopia. Almost.

Early on in Disney's newest animated feature Zootopia, our hero, a bunny named Judy Hopps, voiced by Gennifer Goodwin, enters the police station in which she'll be working for the first time. She's greeted by a huge (pun intended) cheetah named Clawhauser, voiced by Nate Torrence, who comments on how cute Judy is. Judy responds by saying that only other bunnies can call each other cute, but not other animals. Clawhauser sheepishly apologizes for his ignorance and helps direct Judy to her first ever police briefing.

In a way, Zootopia is an apology for the decades of both overt and latent misogyny its released in the world over the past decades. Whether it's one of their earlier films like Sleeping Beauty or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs which taught girls to sit quietly while you wait for a man to save you, or one of their later films like The Little Mermaid which teaches young girls to actively be quiet while you attempt to lure your crush with only your looks, Disney studios does not have a good track record of helping to mold the minds and attitudes of young females. Which is unfortunate considering how instrumental they are in their development.

A Review of The Jungle Book (2016)

The best music covers tend to be songs that improve on a song with great lyrics but mediocre music behind it. Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower” has amazing lyrics because it’s a Bob Dylan song, but so-so music behind it, well, because it’s a Bob Dylan song. Jimi Hendrix was able to take those lyrics and, using his incredible talent as a guitar player, give Dylan’s lyrics the appropriate music they deserved. The Byrds version of Dylan’s “Tambourine Man” is a similar situation. The same rule for remaking songs should also be the same rule for remaking movies. A movie should only be remade if the original is subpar, but has some good stuff in it.

Disney’s 1967 animated classic The Jungle Book is not a good movie, certainly not by today’s standards. I have fond memories of the movie from when I watched it as a kid, but kids are dumb and their tastes can’t be trusted. Re-watching the 1967 film, I realized what a jumbled mess it is. The film starts off on the right foot by having the panther Bagheera watch over a “mancub” Mowgli that he found when the boy was just a newborn that he then has to protect from the evil tiger Shere Khan. However, the film quickly devolves as Bagheera and Mowgli set off on their journey out of the jungle and away from Shere Khan. There’s an extended scene between Mowgli and a pack of elephants that makes absolutely no sense, Mowgli meets a group of vultures that weresupposed to be voiced by The Beatles, and Bagheera comes and goes as he pleases.

Disney’s live action version takes the same basic premise of their 1967 film, Bagheera and Mowgli journey to find humans to escape the wrath of Shere Khan, and makes a coherent story out of it. The 1967 animated movie is like a Bob Dylan song, a sub-par whole with excellent parts in it, and the 2016 version is like Jimi Hendrix who made an excellent whole that improved on the good parts of the original.

The 15 Best Films of 2015

15) Dope
Written & Directed By: Rick Famuyiwa
Starring: Shameik Moore, Tony Revolori, & Kiersey Clemons.
STARS: 3 out of 4

Brief Description: Dope is the journey of Malcolm (Moore) and his two friends Jib (Revolori) and Diggy (Clemons) and their struggle of getting out of the slums of Los Angeles. The three high school kids are extremely bright and are looking to escape their circumstances by getting into college, until a bag of cocaine comes into their possession. Dope is all about the labels the world places upon you and what you can do escape those labels and be the person you want to become. While the tone does vary wildly between drama and humor, the performances of the cast, the amazing 90's hip hop soundtrack (plus the handful of original songs created for this film by Pharrell, and the performances of all the young actors make this film worth watching, As of this writing you can stream Dope for free on Netflix, and you should do.

14) Sisters
Directed By: Jason Moore
Starring: Tina Fey & Amy Poehler
STARS: 3 out of 4

Brief Description: No film made me laugh as much in 2015 as Sisters did. I laughed harder at Trainwreck, but more consistency at Sisters. (The other big comedy of 2015 was Spy, and that movie was chuckle-worthy at best). I was dragged to see this movie thanks to my friends being big babies and not wanting to see The Force Awakens on its opening day weekend, but I'm glad I was dragged. The movie is non-stop laughs, and Fey and Poehler are a delight as always (well, except Baby Mama, but that's another story). The film brings in a lot of current and former SNL alums, some of television's funniest people, and gives Ike Barinholtz his break-through performance. If you like to laugh, check out Sisters.

Extremely Well Made and Incredibly Boring: My Review of The Revenant

I struggle with The Revenant. Not in the sense that it was a purposefully tough movie to watch, but I struggle with it in the sense of trying to respect it on a rational level while despising it on an emotional level. Now I fully admit that I wanted to dislike the movie coming into it, but there are plenty of movies that I’ve only watched solely because they were nominated for Oscars and the quality of the film made me change my mind. Unfortunately, The Revenant was not one of those films. 

But that being said, my feeling of the film and your feeling of this film from watching the trailers won’t be changed by seeing the film. To me, the film looked like a journey that I did not want to experience, and I was correct in my assumption. I know people who couldn’t wait to see this film, and it’s one of their all-time favorites. Ultimately, it will not matter what I write in the rest of this review, because how you feel going into the film based upon the trailers and TV spots you’ve seen is basically how you will feel coming out.

Nonetheless, you cannot deny the masterful and technical achievement it took to get this picture made despite what your opinions of the film are. I do not think that having an arduous shoot is a good enough reason to give a film Academy Awards, but there are a plethora of aspects to this film that are technical masterpieces and worth studying in film classrooms for decades to come. Yet it is extremely difficult to respect something you dislike so much.

My Review of The Martian and How It Helped Resurrect Ridley Scott's Career

“I’m pretty much fucked.”

This is the first line in Andy Weir’s 2011 novel The Martian, but it might as well have been the words uttered by director Ridley Scott after his 2014 film Exodus: Gods and Kings was released. Exodus did end up making its money back (assuming the marketing budget wasn’t astronomical- which it might have been) but it’s 27% on Rotten Tomatoes (RT) was just another film in the laundry list of terrible Ridley Scott films that he’s made within the past 15 years. Ridley Scott will be remembered as an all-time great director thanks to Bladerunner, Alien, and Gladiator, but since the release of 2001’s Black Hawk Down, Scott has made a lot of terrible films including 2013’s The Counselor (35% on RT), 2010’s Robin Hood (43% on RT), 2008’s Body of Lies (54% on RT), 2005’s Kingdom of Heaven (39% on RT), 2006’s A Good Year (25% on RT), and 2012’s Prometheus (which I don’t care what RT says about this one, this was a huge disappointment among all Ridley Scott fans and fans of the Alien franchise). Certainly Scott has made some good films including 2003’s Matchstick Men and 2007’s American Gangster, but the perception on Ridley Scott as recently as the summer of 2015 was that this was a man who seemingly forgot how to direct.

Black Mass Hole: How Scott Cooper's Vision of the Whitey Bulger Story Ruined the Film

James J. “Whitey” Bulger is one of the most notorious gangsters in American history. He is responsible for at least 19 murders plus extortion, racketeering, and drug trafficking. With Steve Flemmi and Kevin Weeks by his side, Bulger and The Winter Hill Gang terrorized South Boston for decades. The actual events of Whitey Bulger's life are so damn interesting that a Hollywood version of his life should have given us a better movie than the final product of Black Mass.

Black Mass is directed by Scott Cooper. The film uses the same techniques that Cooper has used on Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace, his first two feature films, and Cooper's fingerprints are very much on all three of his movies. All three films are methodically paced, bleak-looking, character-driven, and frankly often times outright boring. I actually enjoyed Out of the Furance, but I understand its 53% Rotten Tomatoes score. Crazy Heart, despite being an excellent showcase for Jeff Bridges' talent, is a dull and meandering film. Black Mass pulls a little bit from both of Cooper's previous films as this is an excellent showcase for Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger but moves with a sense of purpose from scene to scene. All three of Cooper's films are extremely character-driven, often times to the story's detriment. That was the case here with Black Mass as this story deserves an action-packed, fast pace script. There was no reason Black Mass couldn't be this generation's Goodfellas- interesting characters that were fun to be with that, while still being plot driven, never lost sight of its characters. Unfortunately, I'll have to "settle" for this generation's actual version of the Whitey Bulger story- The Departed.

The Best Movie of the Summer is Dope

Grantland's Mark Harris is an avid spokesperson for "prestige" films (my words, not his)- films focusing on story-telling and characters and art versus big budget epic blockbusters that would rather replace CGI with its script in order to rake in massive amounts of dough. While I do share Harris' love of a good prestige film, I also can't say I share Harris' dislike of big budget actions films as well. I love a good summer movie when it's done well. Most recently we received The Dark Knight, Edge of Tomorrow, and Mad Max: Fury Road thanks to Hollywood's love of capitalizing on the summer season and I don't want to live in a world without those films. The summer of 2015 hasn't given us a shortage of money-making epics leading off with Furious 7, bouncing to Avengers: Age of Ultron, and now leading the pack (and the world) is Jurassic World. But in a season where Hollywood (mainly Universal Studios) is looking at its pile of money like its Scrooge McDuck about to nose dive into a pile of gold coins, the winner of the summer season is a little Indie that could. Well, winner is a relative term. Jurassic World and Chris Pratt are obviously the true winner, but in terms of quality film making, Dope is the best film you'll see this summer.

Dope is a film written and directed by Rick Famuyiwa- a man who's credits before this looks like a grocery list. It premiered at Sundance, and thanks to Open Road films, Dope was released domestically as counter-programming to the big budget action flicks. Considering Open Road bought the film for a little over 3 million and it's already grossed over 14, it was money well spent. And I personally thank Open Road (and Sony) to give me ability to watch a film this good.

Dope follows around high school seniors Malcolm (Shameik Moore) and his two best friends Jib (Tony Revolori aka the young Indian boy from The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Diggy (Kiersey Clemons)- self-proclaimed Black nerds who love 90's hip-hop and live in the poorest of poor neighbors in Southern California. All three are smart and Malcom has realistic ambitions of attending Harvard and getting out of the ghetto. These three do everything together: they play in a rock band called Awreeo (pronounced "Oreo"), they hit on girls together, they study together, and they get beat up together.

Jurassic World Movie Review: It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Jurassic World
Directed By: Colin Trevorrow
Starring: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, & Vincent D'Onofrio
STARS: 3 out of 4

If you were pumped to see Jurassic World based upon the trailers, then you are going to love this movie. It delivers on everything it promises and then some. You have Chris Pratt doing an incredible Harrison Ford impression and being the bona fide action star / movie star that he is, you get to see Pratt riding around on a motorcycle with velociraptors, and you have the newly created Indominus Rex wrecking havoc among the Jurassic World theme park. It's the quintessential summer blockbuster. You get explosions, chase scenes, and CGI dinosaurs.

I can also see little kids growing up loving this movie the way I loved Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park as a kid. Like most little boys my age, I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. I had dinosaur toys, dinosaur books, dinosaur clothes, and I even tried to read the Michael Crichton books the Spielberg movies were based upon. If you have a young kid seeing Jurassic World today, I can imagine that kid having the same sense of wonder, imagination, and amazement seeing Jurassic World as I had seeing Jurassic Park.

Movie Look Back: American Sniper

When I write movie reviews, I prefer to write them with some sort of broader context. Movies are never seen in a vacuum, therefore discussing the film beyond the film can be helpful. When I initially reviewed American Sniper, I bunched it with another 2014 “prestige” war film, Fury, and called it the death of war films in cinema. Obviously I was being hyperbolic, but since Black Hawk Down, there hasn’t been a straight forward war film I’ve enjoyed- especially one regarding any of the Gulf wars. I was not a fan of American Sniper and I expressed my dislike of the film in my review. I saw the film Friday night of its release and posted my review of the film soon after. Since then, for better or for worse, discussion of the film blew up.

First things first, I stand by my negative review. What other people have thought and Box Office success doesn’t change my feelings and thoughts of the film. The only thing that has changed is my knowledge of what everybody else thought about it. That being said, I have had weeks to reflect on the film which allows me to speak more concisely and accurately. Writing a review after watching a film can turn the review into a jumbled mess, but days and weeks pondering the film allows me time to gather and collect my thoughts.

The biggest fault with this film is Clint Eastwood’s direction, in particular his need to film things quickly and under-budget. Eastwood is notorious for not filming multiple takes and for purposefully excluding scenes from the script. The perfect embodiment of how Eastwood films his movies is the fake baby controversy that dominated your Facebook news feed for a day. Eastwood had intended to use a real baby, but when neither of the child actors to play the baby were available, he used a fake baby. The use of a fake baby was obvious to me as I pointed it out in my initial review, and it would have been noticeable to Eastwood had he looked at his dailies and what he shot. However, since Eastwood doesn’t like to reshoot and Sienna Miller and Bradley Cooper did a good job in that scene, Eastwood said "Eff It" and left that scene in his film.

Matthew Vaughn and Kingsman in a Post Dark Knight World

In a recent issue of SFX magazine, director Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class) ranted against action movies being "Nolan-ized". He stated:

"People want fun and escapism at the moment. Look at the success of Guardians of the Galaxy. I think Nolan kick-started a very dark, bleak style of superhero escapism, and I think people have had enough of it."

I think it's funny how we all tend to "blame" Christopher Nolan for the serious brand of superhero and action movies we seemed to have gotten in the 2000's thanks to the incredible commercial and critical success of The Dark Knight. Nolan takes all of his films and the world his characters inhabit very seriously. The funniest moment in all of his films is probably the scene in Inception where Joseph Gordon-Levitt steals a kiss from Ellen Page. It’s chuckle-worthy, but it shouldn’t be the most hilarious moment of a 9 film span. The word “gritty” gets thrown around so much that it seems to be a law that you must use it when describing a Nolan vehicle. But that’s Christopher Nolan for better or worse, and we all seem to take him for better.

An Everyman's Movie Review: Selma

I can't believe how good Selma actually is. I came in to the film thinking that is was going to be Oscar bait, and I came out of it understanding why people were so upset it wasn't nominated for more Academy Awards. While I don't think it should have dominated the nominations the way Birdman and Boyhood did, I do think it deserved more than just a Best Song and a Best Picture nod.

The two films I had stuck in my mind before watching the film was Lincoln and 12 Years A Slave. Both of them are films that were huge Oscar players once the nominations were announced and both were considered the best film of the year at this time in their respected release years. Both Lincoln and 12 Years A Slave are extremely boring and dull films that truly were Oscar bait and both were films I regretted watching. Both of those films seemed like they were more suited for an 8th grade civics class (with the latter actually becoming a part of a high school curriculum) than the most prestigious night in Hollywood.

Selma actually has much more in common with Lincoln than it does with 12 Years A Slave as both films are about an extremely famous civil rights activist doing what they can in order to get a difficult law passed. Both Selma and Lincoln focus on only a particular portion of this famous activist's life and it shows you how they get down and dirty in the trenches. However, where Selma rises above Lincoln is that it not only generates enough good will for its main character where you truly care about his actions and he's a person more than a caricature, but you're enthralled with the minutia of the movement as well.

An Everyman's Movie Review: Whiplash

"If you want the part, earn it"

- Terrence Fletcher-

Whiplash is a film by (essentially) first time writer/director Damien Chazelle about drive and what it takes to be the best. In order to become the best at your specific craft it takes a combination of desire, training, and being pushed to never settle. Chazelle uses a Jazz Conservatory and a drummer as his medium to tell this particular story, but really, this story could relate to any profession.

The story follows Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) as he enters his first year at Shaffer Conservatory- the best music school in the country. Andrew is a drummer forced to play second fiddle in one of the school's lower bands. Soon he gets discovered by the conductor of the school's elite jazz program, Terrence Fletcher played by the incredible character actor J.K. Simmons. Andrew then becomes immersed in this band and learns very early on what Terrence Fletcher does to make his band and the players in it truly great.

Wild and Still Alice: Bad Movies With Great Female Performances

I recently wrote an article about The Pervasive Culture of Sexism Among Hollywood and The Academy. The purpose of that article was to highlight the continuing problem that Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress nominees tend to come from, well to put it bluntly, boring and bad movies. Being the Oscar completionist that I am, I tend to watch as many movies as I can (while still working a 9-5 job). However, that becomes a difficult task when I need to use my free time wisely and cherry pick what I think will be the best movies. That tends to cause me to miss these films with great female performances in them because these films are not considered good and therefore they drop on my theoretical queue. There are most certainly bad and boring films with great male performances in them, but they tend to be films like Foxcatcher, and thanks to the patriarchal society of Awards Ceremonies, still get nominated for other major awards. However, this year I was able to watch four of the performances in both the Best Supporting Actress and Best Actress category. Two of those films were Still Alice (Julianne Moore was nominated for Best Actress) and Wild (Reese Witherspoon was nominated for Best Actress and Laura Dern was nominated for Best Supporting Actress). Both Still Alice and Wild follow along this trend of bad and boring movies with great female performances in them. Unfortunately, that still means at the end of the day I'm watching a bad and boring movie- which I strongly dislike. You don't want to watch an entire TV season of a show you don't like or read a book you're not enjoying. 

By nominating Reese Witherspoon and Julianne Moore, The Academy has created a perpetual cycle with more bad movies to come. As Filmdrunk puts it: 

"Yes awards are bullshit. Despite this, this they still matter. Maybe not you, maybe not to me, but in terms of which movies get made, awards matter because they matter to actors. And because awards matter to actors, awards affect actors' choice of projects. Which affects which movies get made, which affects which movies we see. Put simply, a lot of bad movies wouldn't get made if A-list and up-and-coming actors weren't jumping aboard solely for the chance to win awards. To say nothing of the more interesting scripts and novel approaches to material that get shoehorned into predictable awards vehicles in the hopes of pleasing predictable awards voters."

It is this very reason that Wild was made. Although Reese Witherspoon already has her Oscar statute, she is in a new phase of her career where she's trying to be risky and trying new things. She was great in her small role in Mud (and similar to the film's star, Witherspoon is having her own McConaissance), she co-starred in P.T. Anderson's new film Inherent Vice, and she's now started producing films as well. Witherspoon was one of the producers of David Fincher's Gone Girl (and probably expected an Oscar nomination to come from that), and Witherspoon also was a producer on Wild. She is single-handedly responsible for the film's existence. Witherspoon bought the rights to the book in which Wild was based off of, she hand-picked director Jean-Marc Vallee (who just helped Matthew McConaughey and Jered Leto win Oscars for their work in Dallas Buyers Club) and she stars in the project herself. I'm sure Witherspoon got really excited at the prospect of earning three Academy Award Nominations this year.