John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch Is A Very Specific And Very Funny Creation

You're gonna know right away if the specific style of humor of John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch is going to be for you or not. This is a satire of classic children's variety specials hosted by John Mulaney and a large collection of children that's broken up into an assortment of comedic musical numbers, off-the-wall gags skewering hallmarks of children's television (like those "Can You Guess What The Image Is?" puzzles) and a couple of celebrity cameos. Much of the humor seems designed to leave some viewers more baffled than amused and that's totally fine. All art is subjective but that's especially true when it comes to comedy.

Spider-Man: Far From Home Is The Good Version of EuroTrip

AVENGERS: ENDGAME SPOILERS AHEAD. NO SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME SPOILERS THOUGH, I PROMISE

Enemy Has Audacity To Spare And A Top-Notch Jake Gyllenhaal Performance To Spare

Unless you're Jan de Bont or Simon Kinberg, blockbuster movie directors don't start their directorial careers helming big-budget features. Usually, they kick off their filmographies with smaller-scale tales that depart heavily in tone and genre from the blockbusters they'd eventually helm. Jon Watts, for instance, directed the small-scale thriller Cop Car before moving on to helm the MCU Spider-Man movies and Peter Jackson directed foul-mouthed horny puppets before he directed the epic fantasy movies Lord of the Rings. So it is with Denis Villeneuve, who is in the middle of directing a massively expensive adaptation of the sci-fi epic Dune, but just five years ago directed the highly unorthodox thriller Enemy.

Wildlife Is A Quietly Haunting Portrait of Family Chaos from Newbie Director Paul Dano

Hollywood, when it comes to non-indie fare, has always seemed to struggle with what to do with Paul Dano as an actor, usually putting him in the roles of either a disposable sidekick (Knight & Day) or a whiny slimeball (Cowboys & Aliens). Despite that, Dano has managed to procure a number of memorable performances over a little over a decade of steady work in offbeat indie fare like There Will Be Blood, Love & Mercy and Swiss Army Man, to name just a few. Over the course of a quietly impressive acting career, Paul Dano's become quite a fascinating actor and now we can add talented director to his resume with his directorial debut Wildlife.

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Sisters Brothers!

The rootin'-tootin' titular siblings of The Sisters Brothers are two men who have developed a reputation for being handy with a gun and getting whatever assignment you give them finished, albeit finished in an unconventional manner. These two men are Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix), with the former member of the duo looking to find a way out of this life of being a gun-for-hire for bloodthirsty rich folks while Charlie Sisters see's no other life for himself and his brother than the one they're engaging in right now. Meanwhile, a pivotal subplot involves another duo, this time consisting of Southern dandy John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) and chemist Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), with Morris teaming up with Warm for a potentially lucrative prospecting gig after he was initially hired to hold Warm hostage for the Sisters Brothers.

Jake Gyllenhaal's Recent String Of Strong Performances Continue In Stronger

Prior to March 2013, Jeff Bauman (Jake Gyllenhaal) was just another guy in Boston, Massachusetts. A good-hearted fella with an immature streak, Bauman lived out his days with his boisterous family, a steady Costco job and an on-again/off-again relationship with Erin Hurley (Tatiana Maslany). In his newest attempt to rekindle his relationship with Hurley, he promises to be there cheering her on at the finish line of marathon she's running. He makes good on that promise and shows up to the marathon the very next day with his own sign in tow when all of a sudden tragedy strikes in the form of a bomb going off that catches Jeff in its crossfire.

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.

Good Men Become Obssessed With Finding The Signs Pointing To Answers In Zodiac

We all love a good mystery. Why you think mystery novels, whether they're aimed at adults or youngsters, tend to sell like hot cakes? Mysteries tend to sell well because they offer up all the confusion and uncertainty of everyday life, but typical mystery books/films/TV shows also offer up something life, more often than not, doesn't offer: a tidy conclusion. You get to find out what bad guy committed whatever mystery is driving the plot and his motivations by the end of these mystery tales in sharp contrast to real life where, frequently, those kind of answers are never found. Pieces of mystery based entertainment allow us to indulge in getting the kind of closure on atrocities we may never find in reality.

Extraneous Raunch And Viagra Weakens The Charming Romance In Love & Other Drugs

Back in the late 2000's, specifically around 2009 through 2011, the American romantic comedy took a detour into the raunchy and R-rated. It's not like no film in the subgenre had gone to such terrain before, but the likes of The Ugly Truth, Friends With Benefits and No Strings Attached decided to unleash more nudity and F-bombs in the world of romantic comedies in order to entice moviegoers and keep things fresh (a friend of mine smartly pointed out how this trend was also likely a response to Judd Apatow's mid-2000's R-rated comedies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up which had major romantic components to them). Ironically, the most financially lucrative romantic-comedy from this epoch was the PG-13 feature The Proposal!

How Can A Man Go On After Seeing The Horrors Of War? Brothers Examines that Very Question To Fantastic Results

MINOR SPOILERS FOR BROTHERS FOLLOW

Those Amazing Spider-Man movies unleashed a number of terrible things upon our world, but one of the worst was this phenomenon I saw where the arrival of a new Spider-Man immediately meant the previous incarnation of the character must be torn down and defiled lest he distract even a tiny bit from Andrew Garfield's Spider-Stalker interpretation of the character (which wasted an absolutely phenomenal actor in regards to Andrew Garfield). I saw too many social media posts declaring Tobey Maguire to be a "weird" actor who was "whiny" and "stupid" and all that jazz and that just struck me as so weird and as shallow criticisms.

Get Trapped With Overly Familiar But Sometimes Chilling Thrills In Life

Jake Gyllenhaal has been on quite the roll lately. His exemplary lead turn in Nightcrawler was one of the peak moments of his entire career and even in something more middling like Southpaw Gyllenhaal managed to craft a solid performance out of a subpar script. Last years Nocturnal Animals continued his recent career choices of doing bold and daring projects by offering Gyllenhaal a chance to inhabit a tortured persona to fascinating results. So, of course, after all these challenging dramas, it's no shocker that the next big movie Jake Gyllenhaal is headlining is Life, a science-fiction horror film chock full of blood and mayhem, just like Nocturnal Animals. What I'm trying to say is that Life is the exact same movie as Nocturnal Animals.

Nocturnal Animals Is A Dive Into The Unusual And The Well-Made

Have you ever heard of Paciugo? It's a gelato place that allows you to have multiple flavors of ice cream in one bowl! There's a couple of Paciugo's near where I live (one of them is even inside the movie theater I see most of my movies in!) and the narrative structure of Nocturnal Animals reminds me of one of the confections you could get at Paciugo, in that multiple different storytelling flavors are incorporated into one bowl/movie. You've got a Southern revenge thriller, a high-society slow-burn thriller filled with regret and a romantic drama that dovetails into tragedy.

Brokeback Mountain Treks The Terrain Of Forbidden Romances

Much has changed in the past decade since Brokeback Mountain was released. The prevalence of LGBTQA cinema (which, of course, existed long before Brokeback Mountain. Hell, Box Office Mojo alone lists over 200 movies starring LGBTQA characters that were released prior to Brokeback Mountain) has managed to increase slightly, though a myriad of issues still exist for LGBTQA cinema, including how frequently Transgender characters are not played by Transgender actors, the trend of movies that don't dare to have unhappy endings for their LGBTQA characters (why, hello there best movie of 2015 Carol!) tend to get shut out at award ceremonies like the Oscars and the fact that it's notoriously difficult to give LGBTQA films noteworthy theatrical runs domestically.

End Of Watch Review (Classic Write-Up)

Me and the works of David Ayer haven't really gotten along up to this point. The two films I've seen from Mr. Ayer are....well, flat-out messes, honestly. Fury is a confused movie that wants to be a deep introspection on how brutal war is and then turns into a video game at the end. Suicide Squad is an out-and-out disaster, though that one I blame less on Ayer since the studio meddling on that one is so obvious and immense it's hard to tell where his influence begins and ends. So imagine my shock at finding End Of Watch to actually be quite a strong movie, a character-focused action film with two top-notch lead performances.

Everest Review

From the studio that brought you The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything and Legal Eagles, comes Everest, a harrowing tale of human courage and determination. A group of mountain climbers, led by Rob Hall (Jason Clarke) begin an expedition to climb to the top of Mt. Everest, a task that proves to be one not for the faint of heart. However, their daunting undertaking proves to be even more challenging once an enormous storm arrives, leaving many of the climbers stranded and fighting for life trying to get down the mountain.

Trailer For Southpaw Puts Jake Gyllenhaal In The Boxing Ring

Nightcrawler is an incredible movie and to say Jake Gyllenhaal is a major reason why is a vast understatement. The guy was incredible in this role and going into 2015, I was excited as hell for three (yes, three) movies he's got lined up this year, After his turn as Louis Bloom, anything he stars in I anticipate. My anticipation for one of his projects, Southpaw, just went up considerably when I saw this trailer for it, which you can watch below.

Tom Hardy Leaves Suicide Squad Movie

Batman V. Superman: Dawn Of Justice is a huge step forward for the DC Cinematic Universe, but Suicide Squad may be even bigger in terms of helping to establish a cohesive universe between the numerous characters in the world of DC comics. Foes for superheroes like Batman, Superman and The Flash will unite in this feature, which has imprisoned supervillains recruited to do dangerous missions for the government.

My Current Best Acting Nominee Predictions!! (December 30, 2014 Edition)

Well, the nominations for the next Academy Awards ceremony will be released two weeks from this Thursday.So let's take a look at my current predictions for the two main acting categories, Best Actor and Best Actress, at the ceremony!

Editorial: What The Screen Actors Guild Nominations Mean For The 2014 Oscars

We're in the thick of awards season now, with tons of awards outlets announcing their nominations for various awards designed to give praise to the best in 2014 cinema. This morning, the Screen Actors Guild announced their nominations for various awards in the realm of acting. Let's take a look at those nominations and how they impact this years Academy Awards race, shall we?

Nightcrawler Review

When The Lights, Go Down.....In The Ciiiiittttyyyyy

I've always had this terrifying fear of the dark, which I've come to believe stems from the natural human condition of not wanting to lose control. In the daytime, one can see everything and everyone, nothing can surprise me one thinks. But then nighttime arrives, and the entire world it seems has been covered in a shroud of mystery. Anything is possible in this darkened landscape, all bets are off. Being scared of such circumstances feels natural, but leave it to Jake Gyllenhaals main character in Nightcrawler, Lou, to embrace the dark and all the terror that comes with it.