My Own Little World

Lean on Pete is somehow bleak yet beautiful. I was taken aback by how brutal this film is to its protagonist. Charley’s life as shown in the film does not start too great, and when life begins to hit him with blow after blow, taking one thing he loves after another away from him, it begins to become almost depressing. By the end of the film, Charley has almost nothing to continue living for – and the fact that he is just fifteen years old and has seen more life than most middle-aged adults I know makes that all the more heartbreaking. He finds a companion in the titular Pete for a while, becoming attached to this aging racehorse; and when he takes Pete’s future into his own hands and runs away with him, it is done with such poeticism and such little dialogue that makes it resonate incredibly well. As good as the film continues to be after that moment, Lean on Pete begins to show its flaws not long after. As events transpire on Charley and Pete’s journey, everything starts...

If I was writing my review of Breaking Bad  after its fourth season, I would be telling you that this is easily one of the best things I have ever seen on television. Every season is better than the last, and the character development and pacing is more on point than any other film or TV series. However, the fifth season changes everything. In its final sixteen episodes, Breaking Bad  goes from one of the best television series of all time to one of the best things ever put to film. This is  entirely due to the show's writing. Vince Gilligan, the creator of the show, is an absolute genius when it comes to pacing and character development. In reality, despite a lot of breakneck tension and thrills through its first four seasons, Breaking Bad  is quite a slow burn of a show. The character of Walter White, brilliantly portrayed by a never-to-be-underestimated Bryan Cranston, often seems just on the cusp of turning into an absolute monster; however, somehow, someway,...

A little over a year ago, Marvel released one of the first R-rated comic book films: Deadpool . It's huge box office returns changed the game for the genre, allowing studios to realize that their audiences were not just OK with their favorite characters being placed in more extreme films -- they actually welcomed the change. Fast forward to today, and Marvel is taking another stab at the R-rated comic book film with Logan . Unlike Deadpool 's attempts to parody and make light of the superhero genre, however, Logan  aims for the skies and tries to transcend the genre's limitations entirely. Instead of seeing itself as confined to any sort of box, it tries to be an "indie superhero film," for lack of better phrasing. It goes for a small-scale character-driven drama with some bursts of action along the way. And you know what? It works perfectly.  This is the perfect film to send Hugh Jackman's portrayal of the Wolverine riding off into the sunset b...

In closing the door on 2016, I realize that there are a lot of films that I have seen that unfortunately I was unable to review for one reason or another. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't want you guys to know what I think of most of these films, so just like the last couple of years I will be doing a few posts over the next month or so wrapping up all of the films I got a chance to see from this past year. This time, I've got an animated Disney film that packs a punch, Woody Allen's latest film, and a Western featuring Chris Pine and Jeff Bridges... Zootopia  - Buy it.  This is one of the most insightful and timely animated movies ever made. Zootopia is a little too on-the-nose about its contemporary themes at times (and there might be too many moral lessons to keep track of), but otherwise their execution is perfect. The voice acting is top notch, and the animation of the animals is incredibly detailed and lush. The story is different for a Disney film ...

There are some people who have won Oscars and try to win them again. There are other people who haven't been exposed yet in Hollywood but are still gunning for the big prize. And then there's Leo. Seriously, though: Leonardo DiCaprio has been in a film with nearly every single A-list director in Hollywood. He's been directed by Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Clint Eastwood, and Sam Mendes. Leo's also had very varied roles, playing everyone from Howard Hughes to an undercover cop trying to bust the mob to a plantation owner to a subconscious thief. There's one thing that keeps escaping Leo, however: Oscar gold. He's been nominated many times, but he's never had good luck with the lot of nominees he's been handed. Every single time he turns in an incredible performance and has been nominated, someone else steals the show. Well folks, if Leo gets snubbed again this year, there wi...

There's something to be said for old-fashioned filmmaking. Many of my favorite directors use many elements that are considered "outdated" in their films to great success (I'm looking at you, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg). However, I don't think I've seen a film from the past ten years that is more old-fashioned in its style than The Hateful Eight . That's probably to be expected from a director like Quentin Tarantino. Every single film of his is an homage of some kind to a genre of film that either has gone under the radar or away entirely. He also is a film buff in the most literal sense, going so far as to pay for the installation of one hundred 70mm film projectors worldwide to show a special "Roadshow" version of The Hateful Eight  that adds an overture, intermission, and six more minutes to the already long film. From the opening credits, I noticed two things that made me feel that this film was from a bygone era: the score b...

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...