Charlie's Angels Demonstrates Promise As Well As Glaring Shortcomings

First drafts can be rough. Speaking from experience on this matter, first drafts can frequently hold a lot of promise but also a lot of rough patches. Ideas may not be as fully-formed as they should be. The structure of your piece can be clumsy. Your singular voice may not shine through as distinctively as it should. No worries, though. After all, who gets it right on the very first try? Certainly not me! Unfortunately, Elizabeth Banks' Charlie's Angels reboot feels like the cinematic equivalent of a first draft. Full of promise and hinting at something interesting but it still needed some more work.

Brightburn Fizzles Out Before It Can Reach Its Fullest Potential

Over in Brightburn, Kansas, life is relatively peaceful enough. Kids go to school, parents go to work and Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn), son of Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman), is a seemingly normal Middle Schooler. Except, well, he's not normal. Now, really, nobody is "normal", but Brandon is especially abnormal. His parents have concealed his true origins, which tie into his superhuman strength as well as why he's so attracted to some strange machine located in the Breyer family barn. Realizing he's far more powerful than he ever imagined, Breyer begins to revel in his powers by committing a series of murders around his hometown, which won't remain peaceful for very long now that Brandon A.K.A. Brightburn has come around.

The LEGO Movie 2 Works Well As An Allegory, Less So As A Comedy

Considering how many modern-day American computer-animated movies primarily concentrate on how much dabbing, celebrity voice-overs and Minions going "BANANA!!" they can shove into their runtime, it feels like declaring that the biggest problem with The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part is that it leans too heavily on its central allegory at the expense of humor should be a compliment disguised as a critique. Can something like The Emoji Movie even spell allegory, let alone execute one? But The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part, though not devoid of entertainment, does feel like a movie so wrapped up in its central allegory that its attempts at humor feel more obligatory rather than actually entertaining.

Saban's Power Rangers Is...Diverting Fun? Wait, What, It's Actually Fun? Huh.

Someone at Saban Entertainment (the company that owns Power Rangers) obviously wanted to make a live-action feature film about the Power Rangers in order to cash in on the craze of big-budget live-action movies adapting childhood TV shows with massive nostalgia-driven fanbases. And so, lo and behold, the resulting project is Saban's Power Rangers, a $100 million budgeted motion picture whose starting premise basically amounts to "What if we merged The Breakfast Club and Pacific Rim into one movie?". That very much sounds like two motion pictures that should never ever be mashed together but they've gone and done just that. The resulting movie is....actually not bad, much better than I expected it to be, though this whole thing carries more than a few major shortcomings to its name.

Slither Review (Classic Write-Up)

The single most important question you must ask yourself prior to watching Slither is the age old inquiry "Do I want to watch an extremely gory movie where extraterrestrial mind-controlling slugs lay waste to a small Southern town?" If so, well, Slither should more than satisfy, as it excels as not only living up to all the gross-out potential premise, but also in having some well-written characters and examples of strong acting from the likes of Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks.

Five Actresses Who Would Be Great Choices To Play Captain Marvel

A large number of new superheroes will be introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the next years, and interestingly, most of them have already been cast. Benedict Cumberbatch will play Doctor Strange, Chadwick Boseman will bring Black Panther to life and Tom Holland will be the MCU version of Spider-Man. But one notable hero is left to cast; Captain Marvel. This character has been one that many have been clamoring for to receive a motion picture, and with such a film arriving in 2018, I thought it might be interesting to look at five actresses who would do the character justice!

Love & Mercy Review

All You Need Is Love...And Elizabeth Banks

Where exactly has John Cusack gone off to? After appearing in the highest grossing movie of his career in 2009 with the blockbuster 2012, the actor has become rare to find in a major feature film. Since the start of this decade, he's only starred in two movies that made it to wide release (Hot Tub Time Machine and The Raven) and has spent his time appearing in direct-to-DVD action films and thrillers. A pity, since Love & Mercy shows the guy still has chops and deserves better than what he's worked with recently.

Fred Claus Is A Mean-Spirited Misfire Of Gigantic Proportions

Welcome to 25 Days Of Christmas Pop Culture! From now until Christmas Eve, I'll be tackling one piece of Christmas pop culture! It could be a book, movie, TV special, song....so long as it's festive for this time of the year, it'll be checked out in this daily column!

The success of Tangled begat Frozen. The success of Shrek begat Puss In Boots. When a movie studio finds financial favor in a certain property, original properties taking cues from that successful feature are just as common as sequels. So it's not hard to imagine Warner Bros. taking one look at all the money fellow Time Warner owned movie studio New Line Cinema made with Elf and wanting their own family Christmas movie with a big comedian. They decided to also take a cue from 2005 smash hit Wedding Crashers by reuniting Vince Vaughn with that movies director, David Dobkin.