Prepare To Take A Snooze With Sleepless

 Is this really the best Hollywood can do by way of Jamie Foxx and Michelle Monaghan, sticking them in some already long forgotten January action/thriller? C'mon, both of these actors are so much more talented than this! Oh well, here's hoping both of them get better projects in the future, which should be (in theory) be easy cuz the 2017 movie that brings them together, Sleepless, is a thoroughly forgettable endeavor. In this feature, Foxx plays an undercover cop named Vincent Downs whose devotion to trying to go on the inside and take out Las Vegas drug crimelords has made him distant from his wife and son.

The Scares Never Show Up In The Bye Bye Man And Neither Do Any Actual Positive Qualities

2017 has been "the best of times...the worst of times" for horror movies it seems. For every Get Out, It Comes At Night and It, we've also gotten utter dreck like Rings and Wish Upon. I foolishly thought those two films couldn't be beaten in terms of lowering the bar for horror cinema in 2017, but The Bye Bye Man somehow beats out a snooze-inducing Rings sequel to become the worst horror film of the year and possibly the worst 2017 movie that isn't 9/11. Not only is this a terrible motion picture but it's bad in amateurish ways that aren't particularly common among conventional theatrical releases in 2017.

There's Too Much Ho-Hum In A Movie Like xXx: Return of Xander Cage That Should Be All Vroom Vroom

He's back. You all thought he was dead but nope, Xander Cage (Vin Diesel) has just been using his extreme sports skills to help poor people in foreign countries get the ability to watch Soccer matches on TV. But it looks like his time off the grid is coming to a close when his former boss, Augustus Eugene Gibbons (Samuel L .Jackson), is killed by a falling a satellite. Jane Marke (Toni Collette) doesn't believe this was an accident, in fact, she knows this was the work of someone tampering with a government device called Pandora's Box, that allows a single person to control any satellite in existence. Obviously, the only way to stop this threat is by making heavy use of Xander Cage's extreme sports skills.

Good Actors Get Saddled With Bizarre Tonal Shifts In Trespass Against Us

You would think combining Michael Fassbender with Brendan Gleeson would result in pure cinematic bliss, right? These two are great actors, surely pairing them up could only end up making something awesome! Oh, I would have thought that too about a year ago, but last December brought these two European actors together for the first time in that utterly forgettable Assassin's Creed movie. Their second collaboration, the crime thriller Trespass Against Us, is better than that video game movie dud but it's still a mixed bag of a film that still can't quite live up to the sort of quality a Fassbender/Gleeson movie really should obtain given the two's track record.

Go On A Thoughtful & Beautiful Journey Out To Sea With The Red Turtle

We've all heard the phrase "A picture's worth a thousand words" ad nauseum in our lives at this point, but there's really no better axiom to pull out in order to really pinpoint why The Red Turtle works so well. This newest feature hailing from Studio Ghibli is a hand-drawn animated feature (with computer animation embellishments) that is an entirely dialogue-free affair, instead choosing to tell its original story solely by way of boatloads of gorgeous animation. Without verbal communication at its beck and call. The Red Turtle creates something extraordinarily unique with a remarkably potent emotional center.

A Tour De Force Awaits For Those Who Watch There Will Be Blood

If there's one common fixture in the last three movies made by Paul Thomas Anderson, it's an affinity for going into decades past of American culture and probe at the darker underbellies of these time periods. Back in 2012, for instance, he released The Master, a movie set in the 1950's, a time period typically associated with lovely picnics and white-picket fences that was here used as a backdrop as the story for a World War II soldier trying to find a post-combat purpose in the world. The film he made just prior to The Master, There Will Be Blood, is also a part of this trend, with this 2007 directorial effort of Anderson's being set in the first few decades of the 20th century.

It's Hard To Find Much Meat On The Bones Of The Founder

In the 21st century, McDonalds has weathered a storm of bad publicity stemming from growing health concerns surrounding their food which has only been compounded by documentaries like Super Size Me. While McDonalds still makes money hand over fist, there's no denying their reputation has been tarnished greatly in the 2000's and it's likely never going to restore itself to its former reputation given how the fact that the companies food is so completely unhealthy is now basic knowledge. The Founder takes audiences back to a time when the word McDonalds had an aura of promise and innocence to it, to an era where the eatery was limited to just one location in California.

The Happening, Like Hot Dogs, Gets A Bad Rap, But Unlike Hot Dogs, It Totally Deserves That Bad Rap

After the double-whammy of the fun thrillers The Visit and Split, going back to watch M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening for the first time is akin to stumbling upon a photo of your friend being deeply intoxicated after that same friend has been sober for four years now. It's a glimpse into a darker era of a person's past, one that's still stuck in the back of your mind even as he cleans up his act and improves himself. Needless to say, The Happening is pretty much an awful bad terrible sinful rot of a motion picture, but it is an entertaining disaster in contrast to Shyamalan's later dismal efforts like The Last Airbender and After Earth which never went beyond being simply dismal.

Art And Humanity Collide In Life, Animated

Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs turns 80 years old. Think about that for a second. This movie is only 20 years away from having existed for an entire century. While Snow White and her diminutive pals may be the oldest film in the Walt Disney Animation Studios library, it's far from the only movie the studio has created that's endured throughout the decades. Thes likes of Jiminy Cricket, Dumbo and Mickey Mouse have been entertaining kids and adults alike for so long now, it's impossible to imagine the current pop culture landscape would even exist without them. But how do films like these manage to keep going on from generation to generation? Maybe it's because for many, these Disney animated films aren't just movies but a way to understand the world around them.

Captain Fantastic Tires To Be An Inspirational Tale About A Neglectful Selfish Father. It Doesn't Work.

Last year's Sundance Film Festival delivered some unique motion pictures that have stuck around in my mind a year after that festival concluded. There was the comedic classic Hunt For The Wilderpeople, the zany yet thoughtful Swiss Army Man, and of course, Kenneth Lonergan's beautiful meditation on grief Manchester By The Sea. But every film festival has its duds, it's just the law of averages when you're screening a large number of movies. The Hollars was one big star-studded misfire and Captain Fantastic serves as another example of indie feature that debuted at last year's Sundance Film Festival that just doesn't work.

Monster Trucks Is The Best Movie Of 2017

That headline is technically true since all the other movies I've seen theatrically this year were technically released in 2016. Monster Trucks is the only 2017 movie I've seen theatrically thus far, so, yep, it is indeed the Best Movie Of 2017 for me right now!

Snarky explanation for that clickbait headline out of the way, let's talk about Monster Trucks, the second feature film from Paramount Animation that's been delayed nearly two whole years after its initial May 2015 release date and also serves as the live-action directorial debut for Ice Age director Chris Wedge. It's a live-action movie with a CGI creature best friend for the lead character in the vein of those Smurfs and Alvin And The Chipmunk movies, though this is more like the forgotten 2009 film G-Force in that Monster Trucks is technically an original property. And, thankfully, it's better than all of the other 21st century live-action/CGI family movies I just listed off.

Patriot's Day Is Brought To You Courtesy Of the Red, White And Blue...And Messy Screenwriting

Peter Berg's track record as a director has more loop-de-loops than a rickety o'l rollercoaster. Hancock had a solid first half that deteriorated into a forgettable second half, Battleship was a complete misfire, Lone Survivor I barely even remember apart from thinking it wasn't very good but then there was last Fall's Deepwater Horizon, a taut, well-made disaster movie that actually showed some real craftsmanship in terms of creating tension on Berg's part. Was this a sign that he was finally becoming something more as a director, that o'l Peter Berg was about to really break out and become an auteur that would leave the shackles of Battleship and Hancock behind him?

And No One Dared Disturb The Sound Of Silence

As a Christian, my biggest complaint with so-called faith-based Christian movies like God's Not Dead is...well, I don't just have one complaint with these atrocious movies, the worst of the bunch are pretty much top-to-bottom disasters. But in terms of complaints directly connected to my faith, these films claim to try to explore real-world struggles of Christianity but don't seem to exist in the real world. In an effort to be as squeaky-clean as possible, actual topics of hardship are rarely explored in these Christian films. More adult concepts are off-limits except for rare sequences like Kirk Cameron bashing in his porn-riddled computer in Fireproof and any of the tepid dramatic situations are easily resolved in a tidy little bow.

Dev Patel Is Living On The Inside, Roaring Like A Lion

What an odd puzzle of a movie we have here. Lion starts off strong and finishes in a similarly satisfying manner, with both sections of the movie relying on some extremely well-done poignancy that tugs right at your heartstrings. But in between those opening and closing 10-minute or so segments is a messy movie with sporadic moments of goodness trying to breathe amidst an overly busy screenplay that's trying to shove too many real-life events into all too short of a running time. Looking at Lion as a whole, those opening and closing scenes likely resonate all the more because of how inconsistent a lot of the film as a whole.

Hidden Figures Is A Total Charmer Of A Movie With A Strong Cast

When ya think about it for even a microsecond, the achievements in space exploration done by NASA truly are incredible, some of the best accomplishments done by our species in the 21st century. We've been probing heretofore unknown territories, truly going, to quote Star Trek, "where no man has gone before". Tragically, NASA has seen massive budget cuts and what not in the decades past but Hidden Figures takes place in an era where we were all invested in NASA on a patriotic level, where it's accomplishments were simultaneously demonstrations of what kind of glorious achievements our country could grasp.

Coping With Grief At A Young Age Is The Crux Of The Phenomenal A Monster Calls

Contemplating on A Monster Calls after seeing it, I've come to the conclusion that the film is most reminiscent in tone of atmosphere of pop culture like Charles M. Schulz Peanuts comic strip or Spike Jonze's 2009 motion picture Where The Wild Things Are, slices of storytelling that dare to look at adolescence in an uncompromising fashion in a dramatically compelling way. After all, childhood isn't a portion of one's life that's just filled with ceaseless joy and wonderment, it's rife with its own set of unique challenges and struggles. To quote a blonde-haired self-proclaimed genius from the funny pages: "People who get nostalgic about childhood were obviously never children." Much as we like to look back on childhood (like any part of our life that exists in the past) with rose-colored glasses, the reality of growing up as a youngster is much more emotionally complex and tumultuous.

Woah! Why Haven't More People Been Talking About The Intimate And Powerful Netflix Movie Blue Jay??

So far, Netflix's forays into the world feature films haven't been as successful as their TV shows and they've easily being overshadowed by Amazon's various box office and awards hits like Manchester By The Sea and Love & Friendship. But 2016 showed the company was capable of releasing some high-quality feature films such as The 13th (one of the year's best movies) and now Blue Jay helps solidify the idea that Netflix may just get a handle on the motion picture side of the entertainment equation yet. I have no clue why Blue Jay hasn't garnered more attention but make no mistake, it's quite the gem of a motion picture.

Free State Of Jones Is As Tedious As It Is Sprawling

All good things must come to an end and that includes Matthew McConaughey's recent resurgence as a leading man. Starting with The Lincoln Lawyer in March 2011, McConaughey has had a streak of unique and high quality films like Mud and Magic Mike to appear in that showed new facets of what he could bring to the table as an actor. This past June brought out his newest starring vehicle, Free State Of Jones, which landed with a thud and quickly vanished without a trace from movie theaters across the globe. Having finally caught up with it, it's not exactly a shocker it had such a short theatrical life.

Finn Jones Is Playing Iron Fist In The Marvel Cinematic Universe!

There are four Marvel superheroes set to get individual TV shows on Netflix before teaming up for a miniseries entitled The Defenders that'll air on the same network. Three of those (Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage) have already been cast for a while now, and the fourth, Iron Fist, after months upon months of speculation, just got cast. Ladies and gentleman, meet Finn Jones, the man who'll be playing the first ever live-action incarnation of the superhero Iron Fist.