The Last Movie Star Traps Burt Reynolds In An Overly Conventional Tale

Burt Reynolds has been such a prominent figure of American cinema for so long now that it's easy to see an emotionally affecting movie being made out of Reynolds taking a wistful look at his career. But The Last Movie Star is not the thoughtful career retrospective Reynolds deserves, instead being something more akin to that dreadful first Expendables movie than Unforgiven in terms of quality. Writer/director Adam Rifkin delivers a story that's aiming for thoughtfulness but ends up being far too conventional and surface-level for its own good, with its most memorable traits being distracting oddball traits of the project, most notably in that Burt Reynolds is kind of sort of playing himself here.

How Did The Circle End Up Being This Poorly-Made?

Every director has their misfires in their filmography, with even one of the all-time greats like Steven Spielberg having films like Hook or The Lost World: Jurassic Park in their filmography. But it's always a disappointment when a director I seriously like manages to craft a dud, kinda like when a parent realizes their kid has committed some kind of crime, y'know? You know they're better than this, how could this have happened? In the case of The Circle, it's director James Ponsoldt, the filmmaker behind The End Of The Tour and the particularly excellent 2013 drama The Spectacular Now, that stumbles here when he tackles the world of cyber-security and internet privacy.

Summer Movie Memories: Boyhood Is A Cinematic Treasure

In Summer Movie Memories, I'll be looking at summer movies from Summer 2014 and analyzing what really made them stand out this summer, for reasons both good and bad. In this final entry, I look at the masterpiece Boyhood, so obviously, SPOILERS for Boyhood lie ahead. 

Boyhood Review

A Life of Thoughtfulness

I'm one of those guys who just thinks. A lot. Like, I can't turn off my brain. That's probably what's made me so cautious as a person; I can't help but think of every possible scenario that can come from any given scenario. As one might expect, my thoughts can occasionally drift to the heavy stuff, like the point of existence. Now, to go with my ability to do such deep thinking, is my photographic memory. I'm a visual kind of dude, and I can remember the smell, surroundings, feel of almost every single moment in my life.