My Own Little World

For the first 25 minutes of The Ridiculous 6 , I am proud to say I didn't hate it. It had jokes that missed the mark and a few subpar characters, but the setup seemed promising enough. Then a donkey literally took a crap on the entire movie, and I knew it was only going to get worse.  It's become common knowledge to those who know me that there are two immense passions in film for me: my love for the Star Wars saga and my extreme dislike of Adam Sandler. The former reached its highest point last Thursday with the release of The Force Awakens , my current favorite film of the entire year.  The latter, meanwhile, is further cemented with The Ridiculous 6 .  I didn't rule out this film, though. I gave it an honest chance, mostly because it was a Netflix original. I thought that this might be a turning point in the recent downward trend that Adam Sandler has been on over the past few years, with the only film I've liked with him being Men, Women and Childr...

If you want the too long, didn't read version of this review, here it is: I just saw The Force Awakens again on Friday after seeing it Thursday night.  Like, this movie is seriously that good. And just to be clear, I was going to have no problems saying The Force Awakens was just good, decent, or even terrible if I thought so. But this movie is seriously incredible. I've never wanted to see a film more in my entire life. I've never pre-ordered tickets for any film except this one. I've never had higher expectations walking into a theater and had them fulfilled like this. This review is going to be very different from my normal style. Usually, I break up the components of a film and talk about them individually. While I’m still going to do that to a certain extent, I’m more so going to talk about this separately as a fan and a critic because it will allow me to collect my thoughts more easily.  As a Star Wars fan, watching this film excited m...

I'm just going to come right out and say it: Creed  is one of my favorite movies to come out this year. It's not because the Rocky franchise is one of my favorites in cinema history, as I feel that a couple movies really tainted the entire series. It's not because I like any of the specific actors or crew members involved, as I'm not very familiar with any of them. No, it's because this is a movie that I would gladly spend my money on time and time again. I left the theater pumped up and wanting another installment in a way that almost no other movie has done. Looking back at my viewing of Creed , the reasons why surprise me. Usually when I like a film this much, there has to be some kind of great story to get me hooked. With Creed , however, this isn't the case. Not to say that the story is bad, but it definitely is not the film's best quality. It loosely follows the storyline of the original Rocky  at times and deviates from it to become a more sta...

I'm back once again with another Christmas album for you all. This week is something a lot more contemporary than Bing Crosby's White Christmas  and is a good choice for you indie music lovers: The Modern Post's Lowborn King . I first heard of The Modern Post after getting familiar with Thrice frontman Dustin Kensrue's solo projects. I discovered this side project of his through some fellow Christian indie music fans, and gave their EP Grace Alone  a spin about a year ago. I was completely wowed with both the sound and the lyrics, as it gave the EP a very aggressive reverence.  So when it came to looking for Christmas music this year, Lowborn King  was near the top of my list of what I wanted to explore. It's quite safe to say that The Modern Post doesn't disappoint here either, evolving their sound ever so slightly while still bringing that same aggressive reverence that I loved on Grace Alone .  Lowborn King  is another  EP, which I hav...

I deeply dreaded this moment. Every single streaming service so far had failed me. Spotify was too focused on playlists, Google's option just didn't quite work, and Tidal was too unstable as a business. I was going to try Rdio next, but they just got bought by Pandora and are going to be shut down, so they were out. And Deezer isn't available in the United States yet, so that was also out. That left pretty much one option. The one that I swore I would never try. The one from one of my least favorite companies in the world. If you guessed Apple Music , you're right. And if you missed that in the title of this post...well, I don't know what to tell you. I really have never been a fan of Apple as a company, ditching every part of their company except for their music store over a year ago. I didn't like using iTunes with such a large music library, and as for iOS...well, that's a completely different (and much longer) explanation. Yet, when moving over...

I'm in the middle of what's probably my third listen of A Head Full of Dreams , and I cannot decide for the life of me whether I like this record or not. On one hand, this is the upbeat Coldplay that I know and (usually) love back once again with a vengeance to inspire the world to seize the day and make the most of their lives. On the other hand, this is overall the least Coldplay has ever sounded like themselves because of the increasing amount of electronic textures present. Granted, A Head Full of Dreams  pushes Chris Martin and Co. into new directions musically. When I head "Viva la Vida" back in 2008, I never would have thought that we would be hearing Coldplay going full-on disco pop ("Adventure of a Lifetime") or R&B ("Hymn for the Weekend," which also features Beyonce). These areas of experimentation are intriguing and typically work because they're so unexpected. From a band who over the years has been known to more or less st...

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and that means it's time for Christmas music. Over the weeks leading up to Christmas, I'll be doing a series of reviews on as many of the Christmas albums I have as I can. This week, we'll kick things off with an eternal classic: Bing Crosby's White Christmas . I'll bet that when most of you think of Christmas music, one of the first songs to come to mind after the classic Christ-centered carols is "White Christmas." I'll also bet that the version your mind jumps to is that by Bing Crosby. What most casual listeners don't realize, however, is that Crosby was much more than a one- or two-trick pony. His rich, soothing voice continues to this day to be a great match for these classic Christmas tracks we see on White Christmas . Take the opening track of "Silent Night." Nearly every single full-length Christmas album has some sort of rendition of it, and for good reason. However, Crosby's smooth b...