Last Flag Flying Is The Newest Thoughtful & Heartfelt Accomplishment From Director Richard Linklater

Some of the most famous movies made by director Richard Linklater tend to center on youthful protagonists, like the High Schoolers in Dazed and Confused, the college-aged fraternity boys of Everybody Wants Some!!! or the lead character who inhabits numerous stages of youth in Boyhood. Linklater has a knack for writing both realistic and dramatically involving younger characters, but Last Flag Flying shows he doesn't lose his talents as a screenwriter when he's dealing with older individuals (fellow entries in Linklater's dynamite 2010's run Before Midnight and Bernie are similar showcases for this), on the contrary, he seems to thrive when given the opportunity to explore more life-experienced human beings.

The Breadwinner Puts Traditional Storytelling And Hand-Drawn Animation To Good Use

The importance of stories is the foundation on which The Breadwinner chooses to build itself and it proves to be to be quite the strong foundation. Hailing from Cartoon Saloon, the Ireland-based animation studio behind Oscar-nominated features like The Secret of Kells and Song of The Sea, The Breadwinner begins by establishing the relationship between father Nurullah (Ali Badshah) and his young daughter Parvana (Saara Chaudry). While selling items in a local marketplace to make a living for their family, Nurullah attempts to educate his daughter, frequently through the method of telling her stories. Neither the attempts at education or him telling her these stories interest Parvana all that much.

An Inability To Be More Introspective Hinders Darkest Hour Greatly

Winston Churchill certainly has been a popular figure in pop culture lately, hasn't he? The likes of Michael Gambon, Brian Cox and John Lithgow have all portrayed him in major roles on various film and television programs over the last two years. Add the Joe Wright-directed Darkest Hour as the newest piece of evidence that Winston Churchill is having a resurgence in his modern-day pop culture presence as Gary Oldman, with the aid of extensive makeup work, becomes the newest actor to portray this former British Prime Minister who played a crucial role in a number of events during World War II.

Call Me By Your Name Starts Off Slow Before Focusing On An Absorbing Romance That's Just Peachy

For his fifth (excluding documentaries) feature-length directorial effort, director Luca Guadagnino turns his eye to helming an adaptation of the novel Call Me By Your Name (penned by James Ivory) into a motion picture of the same name. Taking place in Guadagino's home country of Italy, this novel is all about the story of Elio Perlman (Timothee Chalamet), a 17-year-old who finds himself living in a luxurious house owned by his kindly father, Mr. Perlamn (Michael Stuhlbarg), but also struck by boredom as he waits for the summer days to run out and grapples with a local tendency for people to hide who they are (his mom hides their families Jewish heritage while a girl Elio talks to frequently says she veils her love for literature). The introduction of a new houseguest in the form of his dad's former student Oliver (Armie Hammer) only seems to add irritation to Elio's summer since he and Oliver don't get along at first.

No Wonder Audiences Have Connected With Wonder, It's A Real Heartfelt Treat

Live-action family movies that don't star CGI chipmunks or aren't remakes of classic animated Disney fare have become a rarity in theatrically released American cinema to the point that Pure Flix (the studio behind God's Not Dead and other pieces of cinema of similar top-caliber quality) is the only studio in America these days regularly producing such films. That makes Wonder a rarity for sure as well as a reminder of how good these movies can be when produced right. Live-action family movies don't just have to be vehicles for CGI versions of 1960's cartoon characters to make pop culture references, they can instead be actually entertaining movies with heart.

Pottersville Is Strange Yuletide Fare That Embraces Sentimentality Over Laughs

We typically cast Michael Shannon in dark, foreboding roles that take advantage of the man's ability to play intense characters so well. But Shannon can play different kinds of characters equally well too, just look at last years Midnight Special which has him deliver some of his best work as a man just looking to get his super-powered son to safety. For Pottersville, Shannon steps into the realm of comedy, an area he's not entirely inexperienced in (he was in the David Wain spoof comedy They Came Together as well as having a key supporting role in The Night Before) and one he could flourish in given the right project. Pottersville...is not that project.

The Man Who Invented Christmas Is Fine-ish Festive Fare

That first trailer for The Man Who Invented Christmas invited a good amount of mocking scorn when it was first released and really, can you blame anyone? Just watch this thing, it seems like a parody of what a prospective biopic drama of Charles Dickens would be like:

Denzel Washington Decides To Fight The Law And Nobody Wins In Roman J. Israel, Esq

The new Dan Gilroy movie, Roman J. Israel, Esq., reminded me explicitly of last year's two Illumination Entertainment movies, The Secret Life of Pets and Sing (boy, I'm sure you're all tired of hearing that oft-repeated comparision, huh?). Like those two 2016 animated features, Roman J. Isreal, Esq. seems to have started out as a basic one-sentence pitch (what if Denzel Washington played a morally virtuous lawyer who becomes corrupt?) that people were understandably enamored with and then nobody bothered to flesh it out beyond that, resulting in a motion picture that tries to be a thoughtful character-drvien drama but it has no meat on its bones, it's skinnier thematically than a praying mantis.

Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri Pokes And Prodes The Audience With Realistic But Occasionally Shallow Vulgarity

Expectations are a funny thing. I walked into Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri certain I knew just what kind of film I was about to watch and walked out of my screening having just witnessed a feature that played against my expectations in many respects. The premise of this new Martin McDonagh motion picture had me expecting a film that was rife with relevant social commentary and instead the final project itself starts out by positioning itself as something akin to that before transitioning into a story that's more about dealing with general themes of loss and grappling with said loss.

Consider Giving Olaf's Frozen Adventure The Cold Shoulder

The reaction my audience at my screening of Coco had to the pre-movie holiday special Olaf's Frozen Adventure, a 21-ish minute long short originally intended for release solely on ABC, was intriguing to me, as quiet confusion slowly morphed into people, who were realizing this thing was going on much longer than the typical five-minute PIXAR or Disney Animation short, leaving in hordes to go to the concession stand. Those who left the auditorium didn't miss much as Olaf's Frozen Adventure is a middling creation and I say that as someone who actually enjoyed both the original Frozen and the character of Olaf The Snowman.

Coco Is Alive On Arrival

In terms of comparing it to past PIXAR productions, Coco is most evocative to me of Ratatouille and not just because both are PIXAR films taking place in non-U.S. territories in the modern era and both are the only features in the studio's canon to depict characters drinking alcohol on-screen.  Both are animated family movies heavily reliant on dialogue, with little in the way of big chase scenes or explosions (which, of course, are not inherently bad elements to have around) and both explore the concept of chasing your dream in a nuanced realistic fashion while still utilizing heavily fantastical elements. Plus, Coco, like Ratatouille, is a pretty great movie and is easily one of the studios strongest creations from this decade.

Pardon The Obvious Pun, But Lady Bird Absolutely Soars

I love it when an opening scene of a movie just perfectly encapsulates what kind of movie you're about to watch. You only get one shot at a first impression after all and when a feature film is able to come out of the gate swinging with a few minutes of footage that sums up the identity of what's to come so concisely, well, it's a real treat to experience. Lady Bird has this kind of opening sequence, one that depicts our lead character, Christine "Lady Bird" McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) and her mom Marion McPherson (Laurie Metcalf) driving home from a visit to a nearby college. We get a chance to see these two united in being captivated by an audiobook recording of John Steinbeck's classic novel The Grapes of Wrath but once that's done, it isn't long before friction emerges between the two of them.

Mudbound Is Compelling Character-Driven Fare That Knows The Power of Well-Written Dialogue

 

The individual characters in Mudbound have their own stories to tell and their own personalities to convey but there are threads that do tie certain characters together. Some of these individuals find themselves connected by the fact that they're a family while a pair of characters find themselves intertwined to one another due to both of them being soldiers returning home from World War II with intense trauma impacting their psyches. But what unites them all, whether they realize it or not, is the soil, the mud on the land they all share. In this harsh environment of rural 1940's Mississippi, you're at the mercy of the very land you live on, a land that entails all kinds of fascinating human beings that populate the new Dee Rees motion picture Mudbound.

Why Did I Put Myself Through The Entire First Season Of Inhumans? Why?

I did it.

I watched all eight episodes of this show.

I think I'm a little bit dead inside now.

Get In Tune With The Captivating Humanistic Beat Of BPM (Beats Per Minute)

What do you do when your government has abandoned you? What do you do when the pharmaceutical companies meant to create cures for what's killing you instead lollygag around? For those suffering from AIDS at the dawn of the 1990's, this could not be tolerated. Millions of lives had already been lost to this disease that was ravaging the worldwide population and yet those in power seemed to have made little to no progress in trying to help the sick and weary. Thus, the ACT UP group was started to champion the rights of AIDS-suffering individuals across the globe. BPM (Beats Per Minute) is all about following an ACT UP group located in Paris, France comprised of an eclectic coterie of people.

The DCEU Goes From Churning Out Massive Disasters To Churning Out Major Messes With Justice League

MILD SPOILERS AHEAD 

 

And so, to quote the opening line of the Christina Aguilera cover of Car Wash from the movie Shark Tale...here we go again.

There's Some Fun And Clunky Storytelling To Be Found In Murder On The Orient Express

Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) just wanted a little rest and relaxation. The guy spends so much of his time using those deductive skills that have made him the world's greatest detective to solve all sorts of crimes that he's understandably just wanting some time to read his Charles Dickens books and get away from the world. But when he hops aboard his friend's classy train The Orient Express, well, it isn't long before some foul crime rears its head, those kinds of events tend to follow Poirot like a hungry dog. There's been a murder aboard this train and after some convincing, Poirot puts his vacation on hold in order to solve this crime.

Thor: Ragnarok Is Here To Have Giddy Cosmic Fun And It's Impossible Not To Join In

For his newest motion picture, Thor has embraced the Skuxx life by taking on New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi to direct Thor: Ragnarok, an exciting directorial pick that pays off in dividends with one a movie that's just true blue fun through and through. Similar to how Waititi was able to wring humor out of merging realism with romantic-comedy tropes in his debut movie Eagle vs. Shark and smashing together the world of vampires with everyday normalcy in his 2015 comedy What We Do In The Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok offers the filmmaker the chance to juxtapose Marvel superheroes with loads of offbeat comedy that proves to be supremely entertaining.

The Next Thor Movie Has Its First Brilliant Trailer

The Thor movies are definitely the sore spot in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that isn't Iron Fist or Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. I like the first movie well enough and think the second one has its moments (most of them all coming from Tom Hiddleston) despite some heavily flawed storytelling. But this upcoming third Thor movie, Thor: Ragnarok, has had everyone eagerly anticipating for it one big reason: Taika Waititi. The man behind What We Do In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople is taking the director's chair. How can you not get excited for that???

Well, prepare to have your anticipation skyrocket further as the first trailer for Thor: Ragnarok actually just drop, almost out of nowhere. Take a look below!

J.K. Simmons Gets On Zack Snyder's Tempo, Will Play Commissioner Gordon In Justice League

After numerous false starts (one of which, back in 2007, even had George Miller onboard to direct!), a live-action Justice League movie is on the way from director Zack Snyder, with filming set to start on April 11, 2016. In terms of new characters in the film, there's no official word on who the bad guy of the production is, but some imagery from the Batman v. Superman promotional materials explicitly spells out the idea that Darkseid will factor heavily into the plot. But we do have word on another new character that'll be in the film, Commissioner Gordon, who will be played by J.K. Simmons in the film, and presumably will reprise the role in future DC Comics features like a solo Batman movie.