Bill Morrison Makes A Captivating Portrait of The Past With Dawson City: Frozen Time

As a lover of film, the lack of care that was given by early 20th century individuals into preserving many of the earliest pieces of cinema is utterly heartbreaking. A number of motion pictures that were immensely popular in their day and age have been lost to the ravages of time thanks to the carelessness of the people handling them (the fact that such films were exhibited on easily flammable film didn't help matters of course). So much of the earliest history of cinema has been lost, a devastating occurrence that Bill Morrison's documentary Dawson City: Frozen Time chronicles by taking the viewer on an extensive voyage to Canada in the last few years of the 19th century. 

Dean Works Better As A Contemplation of Coping With Grief Than As A Comedy

Dean is the feature film directorial debut for comedian Demetri Martin, who also writes and stars in this project which revolves around Martin playing artist Dean who is struggling with coming to terms with the death of his mother. His Dad, Robert (Kevin Kline), is trying to move forward by selling their old family home, engaging in new exercise routines and keeping in omnipresent contact with his son (which is made all the more easier by the use of his new handy-dandy smartphone). Dean, on the other hand, is looking to be more reclusive as he shuts himself out from his father and tries to avoid fully confronting the internal emotional pain that his mom's passing has caused for him.

Churchill Surrenders Talented Actors To Lackluster Storytelling

From time to time, a fascinating occurrence transpires in Hollywood filmmaking in that two films with similar plots get released in close order to each other. Think of how Deep Impact and Armageddon both were large-scale disaster movies about massive asteroids headed for Earth released between April and July of 1998. A pair of magician dramas from 2006, The Illusionist and The Prestige, provide another great example of this as does Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down choosing to tell action-packed tales of the White House being under siege. Of course, that whole Antz/A Bug's Life debacle of Fall 1998 is likely the most famous example of this. Our newest entry in this trend is a pair of Winston Churchill biopics released in the span of six months in 2017. One of them is Darkest Hour starring Gary Oldman, the other is Churchill and the latter happens to be the subject of this review.

The Forgettable Despicable Me 3 Lacks Creativity And Laughs

As if it wasn't already clear with the last two follow-ups in this franchise, the Despicable Me movies can now stand alongside 21st century animated entities like the Shrek and Ice Age movies as franchises that started out with a great movie before descending into repetitive mediocrity. All the humor and even heart of the first Despicable Me has long since evaporated prior to this newest entry in the ongoing Gru saga, Despicable Me 3, entering theaters. Now, all we've got is references to past movies, a poorly handled plot and unfunny Minion antics. I'd say the franchise is on autopilot but that would indicate it's still moving. It's more like the Despicable Me movies have just been parked in a grimy parking spot for a few years now, not even doing the slightest bit of movement.

Maudie Is As Sweet And Lovely As A Well-Done Painting

Art can be such a wonderful escape from the real world. This is by no means a novel concept in the world of storytelling but there's a reason it keeps cropping up so frequently, it really just resonates with people and helps get at the very crux of why we, as a species, have been creating art for so many years now. Since the dawn of time, we've used art as a way to momentarily escape our own surroundings in a healthy and enriching way. I know that's been true for myself personally and a bunch of other people in my life, so why shouldn't it be a recurring template for storytelling, including as a plot point in the new drama Maudie?

47 Meters Down Attracts Some Sharks But Not Nearly Enough Fun

I'm starting to feel sorry for poor sharks at this point. They're always being paraded around in pop culture as ruthless killers when they're not even close to being the most deadly animal on the planet! Hippos kill more people per year than sharks and we're all getting awestruck by the cuteness of videos of baby hippos (don't get me wrong, baby hippos are incredibly adorable). Sharks, meanwhile, still get a reputation for being merciless senseless killers. That doesn't seem fair to me just like it also doesn't strike me as fair that sharks get their image further sullied by appearing in the disposable thriller 47 Meters Down.

The Failed Attempts At Comedy Were Coming From Inside The House!!!

Poet Mark Strand once wrote how "Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing; When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end." It is true that the end of our lives is full of uncertainty, but even I could have never predicted that my end of always expecting the best from a Will Ferrell movie would come from such a listless movie like The House. As someone who considers The Other Guys, Elf and Anchorman to be among the best 21st century comedies (heck, I even enjoyed Land Of The Lost!), seeing Ferrell follow up abysmal torturous comedies like Get Hard and Daddy's Home with yet another terrible comedy that pairs him up with Amy Poehler and a whole bunch of funny people (including Nick Kroll and Jason Mantzoukas) to such dismal results is...painful, it's just painful to watch really.

The Big Sick Has A Severe Case Of "Excellent-Comedy-Itis". Hope It's Contagious!

MILD SPOILERS FOR THE BIG SICK AHEAD 

2017 has not been kind to the American comedy. Talented actors like Charlie Day, Will Ferrell and Dwayne Johnson have headlined comedies that have ended up being some of the worst movies of 2017 thus far and more often than not these comedies have ended up producing far more boredom than giggles. Heck, I'm saying that without having seen two of the worst reviewed comedies of 2017 so far, CHiPS and Sandy Wexler. But for those like myself that were thinking there was no hope for laugh-oriented cinema this year, here comes The Big Sick, a Judd Apatow-produced feature that actually does bring a whole bunch of yuks as well as thoughtful character work and terrific performances. A 2017 comedy with all of those elements in spades? To quote Smash Mouth, "What a concept!"

Come Grab A Bite With Beatriz At Dinner

Big social dinners have a tendency to always dive into awkwardness, especially when you don't know the people involved. Luckily, the presence of free food (one of the best things to ever exist on planet Earth) can help make any sort of dinnertime awkwardness more bearable but sometimes ya get caught up in conversations or social interactions so thorny to navigate even free food can't mitigate the suffocating amount of awkwardness. That's the kind of social situation the titular lead character of Beatriz At Dinner finds herself in, one which leads to plenty of drama for herself and the other members of the dinner she finds herself attending but, on the bright side, it does result in loads of riveting drama for the viewer.

I Do Declare That The Beguiled Is a Mighty Fine New Effort From Sofia Coppola!

We've had a lot of movies over the past century or so that have dealt with the dramatically potent theme of normal people being forced to do ghastly things in order to survive in a wartime setting. The concept being revisited so many times is understandable given what a thought-provoking idea it is and how constantly relevant it is given the permanent presence of war in every society in the world. Such an idea gets re-contextualized again for Sofia Coppola's newest motion picture The Beguiled, a remake of a 1971 film that starred Clint Eastwood, which looks to the Civil War as a backdrop for what happens when seven ordinary women are faced with the prospect of having to do the unspeakable to survive.

Take A Ride With The Gloriously Energetic And Meticulously Crafted Baby Driver

Considering how Edgar Wright's first four movies had such heavy doses of high-quality action, stylish editing, and rapid-fire dialogue, it dawned on me midway through Baby Driver that Wright's basically been toying with the key ingredients of gangster movies for his entire career. It's like he's been fine tuning his instruments in various ways across his four previous classics until he was finally offered the chance to make an out and out gangster film. Well, now he gets to do just that with Baby Driver, a new crime movie he's directed that's been generating insane amounts of praise for months now ever since it premiered at the South by Southwest festival back in March.

Okja Is A Monster Of A Movie Capable Of Great Absurdity And Equally Great Emotions

Okja is not director Bong Joon-Ho's first time around the science-fiction track, but each time he comes into the genre, he tackles a new corner of science-fiction. For The Host, he was making a film in the style of classic monster movies while Snowpiercer is like any number of super-violent and allegorical high concept movies John Carpenter made in the 1980's. What kind of storytelling terrain does his newest science-fiction venture, Okja, occupy? Interestingly, it seems like its storytelling sensibilities hew closer to both ecologically aware science-fiction movies and heartwarming tales that filter the "a boy and their dog" stories through science-fiction means i.e. The Iron Giant and Big Hero 6.

I'm Holding Out For The Hero Till The End Of The Niiiiiight

The past can be a daunting presence in one's life in varying ways. Sometimes it's a past full of happier memories that feel much more enticing than more dreary modern day circumstances, other times it's a wasted past full of missed opportunities that keep one up at night. Whatever kind of past is haunting your psyche, it's likely being so fixated on the events of the past is preventing you from fully appreciating the present, a corny axiom that has more than a kernel of truth to it. In The Hero, the titular lead character is having his own past loom large over his present day situation, though how he grapples with that issue results in some erratically paced cinema.

Ten Years Later, Ratatouille Is Even More Delectable Than Ever

SPOILERS FOR RATATOUILLE AHEAD!

Ratatouille was released to American movie theaters ten years ago today and I'm still in utter disbelief that it exists. In a decade where American computer-animated movies were primarily imitating the more abrasive and pop-culture reference laden style of the first Shrek movie, here comes Ratatouille, bearing more resemblance to a low-key drama than most 2000's DreamWorks Animation fare, with its heavy emphasis on small-scale dialogue and contemplations on the cost and dangers of upsetting societally implemented social constraints by way of embracing who you really are. The fact that it had such a troubled production (Geri's Game director Jan Pinkiva came up with the story for this project and was originally directing the movie as well before replacing by Brad Bird) only makes it all the more mystifying that it even exists at all.

There's A Good Dog (Brent) At The Center of Megan Leavey

It has been said that war is Hell. By contrast, we know all doggies are pure and perfect creations. Combining the two of these contrasting entities would seem to be as odd of a pairing as Sardines & Mustard or Donald Trump and Codes To Launch Nuclear Weapons. Unlike those two awful duos though, dogs are a common presence in the world of warfare, with brave puppers going out on the front lines to perform all sorts of duties they're human companions can't. So, just to fully recap, not only are doggies cute, adorable and loveable, they're also bad-ass war heroes who put their lives on the lines for our country. Three cheers for doggies!

Check Out Douglas Laman On This Week's Episode Of We Love To Watch!

I've never ever been on a podcast before but that's all changed forever now that I've made a special appearance on this week's episode of We Love To Watch, a podcast started by two super snazzy film geeks, Aaron Armstrong and Peter Moran, allowed me and fellow film writer Michael Guarnieri onto their podcast to discuss Red Planet and Mission To Mars, two dueling Mars movies released in the year 2000! You can find the podcast below, in which the four of us discuss the acting abilities of Gary Sinise and Val Kilmer, why many grounded space movies struggle to create compelling drama and Michael's pizza woes! It's an absolute hoot and it was a privilege to lend my thoughts and distinctive in all the wrong ways cackle to the proceedings! Be sure to listen to the can't miss episode below and be sure to check out the numerous other episodes the We Love To Watch podcast has created, there's so much comedic brilliance in there y'all!

The Third Season Of Fargo Offers Dark Themes, Bold Storytelling And Loads Of Memorable Performances

MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR FARGO SEASON THREE AHEAD

Noah Hawley is an ambitious man, ain't he? Three years ago, he voyaged into the creatively perilous world of TV show adaptations of movies by making a TV show out of the 1996 movie Fargo and created something utterly fantastic in the process. For the second season of that program, he brought the proceedings to the 1970's, widened the scope and managed to deliver something even better than that first season. Just earlier this year, Hawley was the creative head on another FX drama called Legion that managed to fully embrace trippy storytelling and created maybe the best superhero TV show of all-time in the process.

Cars 3 Delivers A Shocking Amount Of Emotionally Engaging, If Sometimes Formulaic, Storytelling

In many ways, Cars 3 feels like a companion piece to last summer's PIXAR movie, Finding Dory. Not only are both sequels but they arrive in an era of PIXAR's filmography so heavily dominated by sequels it's become understandable to question whether the more bold storytelling instincts the studio was relying on for its first 15 years of existence have escaped them (though Inside Out is the kind of masterpiece demonstrating how good this studio can be when it really swings for the fences). Cars 3, even moreso than Finding Dory (whose predecessor never really spawned much in the way of merchandise) is mostly a gamble to create toys and assorted paraphernalia that these Cars movies have become most noteworthy for.

Transformers: The Last Knight Somehow Takes The Transformers Franchise To New Tedium-Drenched Low Levels Of Quality

It shouldn't shock any human being to hear that a Transformers sequel is bad. After what I recollect to be a solid first movie in 2007 (I haven't watched that original Michael Bay feature in years so I can't attest to how it holds up), the sequels in this series have been a never ending series of assaults on the senses. The only good things that have come out of these sequels is the various essays on Revenge Of The Fallen Roger Ebert penned back in 2009 and this one inexplicably bizzare John Turturro moment from the third movie. Otherwise, it's been utterly irritating nonsense for four straight movies. While other American blockbusters lend real gravitas to obscure characters, contemplate weighty themes or deliver rousing spectacle, the Transformers sequels are content to devote entire scenes to the Romeo & Juliet Law.

Rough Night Has Major Story Problems But Don't Worry, It's Got A Good Number Of Laughs To Its Name

Someone pointed out to me the other day how the new comedy Rough Night marks Scarlett Johansson's first foray into straight-up full-on comedies and to my surprise, it kind of actually is. Granted, she's gone into romantic comedies multiple times in her career as well as a Woody Allen dramedy (I'm shocked I didn't know a Hugh Jackman/Scarlett Johansson comedy from Woody Allen movie even existed prior to a couple months ago) and providing voicework for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Sing but in terms of headlining a top-to-bottom live-action comedy, this new Lucia Aniello feature does mark new terrain for the celebrated actor.