Outlaw King Impresses With Its Production Value But Underwhelms With Its Characters

The Hollywood epic was a common sight in the 1950's and 1960's as Hollywood tried to combat the rise of television programming with a horde of movies that used gargantuan budgets to bring to life massive-in-scale stories that usually took place in ancient periods of history. How funny then to consider that the newest Netflix original movie Outlaw King, which reunites director David Mackenzie with his Hell or High Water leading man Chris Pine, is an obvious homage to those types of movies, complete with a $120 million budget that makes it the most expensive Netflix movie yet (Martin Scorsese's The Irishman is waiting in the wings for its chance to turn to Outlaw King and say "Hold my beer!"), yet it'll be seen by the vast majority of people on...televisions!

Another Brick In The Wall

Truth in advertising still exists it seems, as The Wall very much does indeed focus on a wall. I have this wish that more modern-day Hollywood movies would use more inventive titles and eschew these shorter generic titles running rampant in modern cinema but at least the more truncated title of The Wall is pretty accurate to what the actual movie entails. The only way it could be more accurate is if it somehow managed to cram in the names of its two lead actors and its primary location (Iraq) in the title, though at that point I suppose the title would become quite unwieldy at that point. I doubt they could even fit that on a poster in a satisfying manner.

Nocturnal Animals Is A Dive Into The Unusual And The Well-Made

Have you ever heard of Paciugo? It's a gelato place that allows you to have multiple flavors of ice cream in one bowl! There's a couple of Paciugo's near where I live (one of them is even inside the movie theater I see most of my movies in!) and the narrative structure of Nocturnal Animals reminds me of one of the confections you could get at Paciugo, in that multiple different storytelling flavors are incorporated into one bowl/movie. You've got a Southern revenge thriller, a high-society slow-burn thriller filled with regret and a romantic drama that dovetails into tragedy.

Summer Movie Memories: How Godzilla Got His Groove Back

Up until Labor Day, I'll be looking at seven different summer movies from Summer 2014 and analyzing what really made them stand out this summer, for reasons both good and bad. Obviously, SPOILERS for Godzilla lie ahead.