Instant Family Stumbles In Trying To Make Heartfelt Family Fare

Pete (Mark Wahlberg) and Ellie Wagner (Rose Byrne), the two leads of Instant Family, have been debating for a while now whether or not they wanna make the dive into having kids. They finally decide to commit to it though upon learning more about the foster care adoption process which they dive headfirst into by way of doing all the necessary training. None of that training can prepare them for when they actually adopt three kids, teenager Lizzy (Isabela Moner) and her two younger siblings Juan (Gustavo Quiroz) and Lita (Julianna Gamiz), and their whole lives get turned upside down. A whole lot of chaos might just help them become a family, yee-haw.

Get Grooving To Those Thoughtful And Transfixing Boogie Nights

The porn industry is a ubiquitous presence in the media landscape, especially during the 1970's when the medium went through an era marked by financial prosperity that would later get it named The Golden Age of Porn. But how often do we think about the people behind these X-rated movies, the human beings who brought the smut to the big screen back in the day and your laptop screen in the modern-day world? For only his second feature-length movie ever, Paul Thomas Anderson decided to expand on both an idea and a name (Dirk Diggler) that originated in an earlier short film he helmed to create Boogie Nights, which may just be his peak as a filmmaker and God knows that's a high compliment given how many great movies Anderson has made.

Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg), on the surface, seems like a protagonist you've seen many times before, the scrappy kid everyone undervalues who dreams of doing something great with his life and ends up heading off to show business to prove he's something special. For Eddie's journey though, some key differences have been made from the typical depiction of this storyline. For one thing, Eddie's struggles at home stemming from an abusive mother are more realistically rendered, which makes Eddie's tearful proclamation to his mother (who repeatedly yells at her son that he's stupid and won't amount to anything) that he will make a name for himself all the more heartbreaking to watch. After that kind of experience, there's no going back to his old life and considering how troubled it was, that's very much a good thing.

Where exactly will Eddie make a name for himself though? Why, in the world of XXX cinema! Prolific director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), who has dreams of making an adult movie so captivating on a storytelling level that people watch it for more than just self-pleasure, has asked Eddie to come act in some of his movies and now Eddie decides to take up his offer. Eddie, now donning the name Dirk Diggler for the silver screen, is introduced to the various members of Jack Horner's gaggle of actors & technicians, including Horner's wife Maggie A.K.A. Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), Eddie's soon-to-be best bud Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly) and Rollergirl (Heather Graham).

Early on, we get introduced to the various members of Jack Horner's social circle at a big pool party and one can already see there are issues with how these various people interact with each other. Everyone is trying to score something from another person, whether it be drugs, a role or sex or some combination of all three. There is no concern for anyone beyond themselves and this mindset has been so ingrained into everyone's psyches that it's not even a malicious act at this point, it's just how they act. Even a young woman overdosing on cocaine isn't enough to get people to exert empathy, only the prospect of cleaning up this mess quickly and quietly is on the minds of the people who find this dying person. It's clear from the get-go that, underneath all the girls, glitz and glamor, is a self-absorbed atmosphere that can only lead to ruin.

Laying that atmosphere out in the open from the get-go doesn't make the heavily flawed characters a pain to watch though. On the contrary, Paul Thomas Anderson's screenplay hopscotches between a wide array of figures that Eddie meets as he enters the porn biz who are thoroughly engaging to watch. Reed Rothchild (who has been told he looks just like Han Solo don'tcha know) is a total hoot thanks to John C. Reilly's committed and frequently intentionally oblivious performance while Julianne Moore is totally transfixing as the quietly tragic Maggie. Her character is a phenomenal representation of the sense of tragedy that makes the characters of Boogie Nights thoroughly entertaining even in their most unsavory moments.

Each of the characters in Boogie Nights want to upend the odds and get themselves a better life. Whether it's Reed's desire to be a magician, Horner wanting to imbue real cinematic craft into his pornographic movies or especially Maggie's desire to be reunited with her son, these characters are all people who wish to exceed expectations and lead top-caliber lives. But their own self-destructive tendencies (namely drug addiction) keep getting in their own way. They've got the will to change their lives, but not the drive. Though it's got tons of humor to its name and a lively pace, the best moments in Boogie Nights are the quietly tragic ones where characters realize their ambitions can't fit into reality, most notably Scott J. (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) breaking down after his romantic advances on Eddie are rejected and a separate scene showing Rollergirl and Maggie bonding over their personal familiar woes while doing cocaine.

Nestling the combination of tragic pathos and well-realized characters underneath a feel-good partying exterior is a move Paul Thomas Anderson pulls off with grace as both a writer & a director. He's especially good with working with his incredibly well-casted actors, who make the ensemble cast of characters work like gangbusters. There really isn't a dud performance to be found here from leading man Mark Wahlberg, in the role that put him on the map as a leading man, being dynamite as Eddie to character actors Luis Guzman & Alfred Molina doing memorable work in supporting roles. It's Julianne Moore who walks away with handily the best performance here though as she portrays Maggie's internal pain in such subtly masterful ways that emotionally devastate you. A scene where she fights for custody of her son serves as ample demonstration of this as just a facial expression from Moore proves to be as powerful as her depiction of her character breaking down in tears immediately after the custody battle.

Similarly memorable from Boogie Nights is the soundtrack which is littered with memorable 1970's/1980's tunes. Movies heavily utilizing pop tracks from those two decades are a dime-a-dozen, but Boogie Nights make some great unique choices for which songs to use (Sister Christian is an especially good example of this) and the way they're utilized is also key to why the soundtrack works so well. For instance, I would have never ever imagined Fooled Around And Fell In Love being set to the type of scene Boogie Nights sets it against, but it's a brilliant and hilarious move, just one of many remarkably crafty moves this 1997 feature makes that help make it as entertaining as it is. Another one of those moves is ending the story on a melancholy note for the characters, with a few members of the cast making progress as people, but others (like Maggie, her final moment in the film showing her just staring into a mirror in resigned sadness is thoroughly haunting) still left stranded in their own unfulfilled ambitions. What a perfectly realistic somber note to end the story on. Frequently cafard character introspections have rarely been as compulsively riveting as they are in Boogie Nights.

Money, Money, Money, It's Not So Funny In A Rich Man's World In All The Money In The World

The newest Ridley Scott movie, All The Money In The World, has generated plenty of discussion leading up to its theatrical release this past December and it's extremely easy to see why. Kevin Spacey had shot his entire role as J. Paul Getty earlier this year and the film was almost ready to go when news broke at the tail end of October 2017 about sexual allegations being lobbed at Kevin Spacey. All of a sudden, this motion picture found itself starring one of the most detested men in Hollywood and Ridley Scott undertook a preposterous-sounding task to rectify this: reshoot Spacey's scenes with Christopher Plummer instead playing the role.

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.

The Happening, Like Hot Dogs, Gets A Bad Rap, But Unlike Hot Dogs, It Totally Deserves That Bad Rap

After the double-whammy of the fun thrillers The Visit and Split, going back to watch M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening for the first time is akin to stumbling upon a photo of your friend being deeply intoxicated after that same friend has been sober for four years now. It's a glimpse into a darker era of a person's past, one that's still stuck in the back of your mind even as he cleans up his act and improves himself. Needless to say, The Happening is pretty much an awful bad terrible sinful rot of a motion picture, but it is an entertaining disaster in contrast to Shyamalan's later dismal efforts like The Last Airbender and After Earth which never went beyond being simply dismal.

Patriot's Day Is Brought To You Courtesy Of the Red, White And Blue...And Messy Screenwriting

Peter Berg's track record as a director has more loop-de-loops than a rickety o'l rollercoaster. Hancock had a solid first half that deteriorated into a forgettable second half, Battleship was a complete misfire, Lone Survivor I barely even remember apart from thinking it wasn't very good but then there was last Fall's Deepwater Horizon, a taut, well-made disaster movie that actually showed some real craftsmanship in terms of creating tension on Berg's part. Was this a sign that he was finally becoming something more as a director, that o'l Peter Berg was about to really break out and become an auteur that would leave the shackles of Battleship and Hancock behind him?

Deepwater Horizon Has Peter Berg Finally Breaking Through As A Filmmaker

Peter Berg belongs with the likes of Antoine Faqua, Michael Bay and Zack Snyder in the category of directors I shall henceforth refer to as "Macho Dudes Making Macho Movies For Macho Moviegoers". Individuals belonging to this classification frequently make motion pictures that adhere to the most primal definition of what constitutes masculinity, with pervasive attempts to appear "rugged" and "extreme" typically coming at the cost of coherent storytelling and interesting characters. Those are certainly two elements missing in spades in Peter Berg's past work, especially in the 2012 disaster Battleship.

An In-Depth Autopsy Of Daddy's Home

It's pretty apparent that Daddy's Home started out life as a singular concept; a step-dad, played by Will Ferrell, is just beginning to become a real father to his two step-kids when the biological father, played by Mark Wahlberg, re-enters the picture. And then...that's all they got. They didn't bother to write down distinct personalities for the characters in the story, nor a cohesive story structure or, perhaps most egregious of all in a comedy, any jokes to speak of. Daddy's Home isn't entertaining, it's simply 90 minutes of inertia.

Ted 2 Review

Not Better Off Ted

Seth MacFarlane has some recurring tropes in his work that, frankly, are more of a hindrance to his creations than anything else. He loves shock humor, he adores cutaway gags and any chance to pay homage to the classic big band music of yesteryear will be taken with aplomb. Maybe the most surprising element of the first Ted was how it mainly eschewed those traits in order to tell a (GASP!!!) cohesive story. To boot, Ted (Seth MacFarlane) and John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) had a relationship that felt quite sweet and real, which helped to ground all of the proceedings.

Get Hard Review

It's A Hard Knock Life, For Us Viewers

Will Ferrell's a great comedic mind, there's truly no denying. Anchorman and The Other Guys are two of my favorite comedies, while his various appearances on late night talk shows (namely on Conan) are always a hoot, thanks to his remarkable ability to keep a straight face no matter the situation, even when he's carrying a bird named Professor Feathers on his shoulder. In his newest movie, Get Hard, Ferrell manages to get a few moments of humor, though those bits and pieces of effective comedy just aren't enough to salvage this dire film.

Grab Your Thunder Buddy And Watch The Trailer For Ted 2!!!

Alright, I know I'm going to alienate tons of people here, but honestly, I'm a huge fan of the Ted. The film hit just the right note of over-the-top humor and surprisingly fleshed out characters (the friendship between Ted and John was nicely realized). Seth MacFarlane's last film, A Million Ways To Die In The West, underwhelmed me, since it played into many of the filmmakers worst tendencies that Ted somehow managed to avoid. Still, I have been looking forward to MacFarlane's next film, Ted 2, which just got a trailer that you can you watch below!

As You Might Expect, Morgan Freeman Will Be In Ted 2

The sequel to the delightful 2012 comedy Ted keeps moving forward to its June 26, 2015 release date. The cast already includes returning cast members Mark Wahlberg, Seth Macfarlane and Patrick Warburton (no word yet on if Mila Kunis will come back) and will bring Amanda Seyfriend onboard. Another new addition to the films cast has been added; the incomparable actor Morgan Freeman.

Classic Write-Up: The Fighter Review

A Fight (And A Performance) For The Ages

David O. Russell has quickly become one of cinemas most prominent writer/directors thanks to his 2012 and 2014 features Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Both received critical raves and massive box office, as well as vocal approval from this particular film critic. Both of those films, especially Hustle, are expertly made films, with excellent performances and thoughtful screenwriting. So I was eager to finally catch The Fighter, the movie made just before Russell reached his current popularity.

Summer Movie Memories: The Fourth Transformers Movie Ambition Is Only Outmatched By Its Idiocy

My reaction to Trans4mers

Up until Labor Day, I'll be looking at seven different summer movies from Summer 2014 and analyzing what really made them stand out this summer, for reasons both good and bad. Obviously, SPOILERS for Transformers: Age of Extinction lie ahead. 

Editorial: You Got A Bay....Or Nah?

So, Michael Bay did it again. Another big hit for the filmmaker, another movie torn to shreds by critics. One of those critics happen to be yours truly, who would easily consider Transformers: Age of Extinction one of the worst movies, not just of the year (it's by far the worst, juuuuuust edging out God's Not Dead) but of all-time. It's an incoherent mess that can't even use robotic dinosaurs in a fun manner, let alone give us a screenplay that works on any level.

Transformers: Age of Extinction Review

You Know, We Have A Saying On My Planet As Well....I Don't Care

WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS CHOCK FULL OF SPOILERS. I NORMALLY DON'T DO THAT WITH MY REVIEWS, BUT GOOD GOD I NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS MOVIE AS OPENLY AS POSSIBLE

There are movies that are just powerful in ways we can't explain. The very nature of film criticism is to boil down the beauty of movies to the format of words, but sometimes, the images put on the silver screen just cannot be given justice through the medium of writing. That being said, I shall try my hardest to convey how much of a painful endurance test Transformers: Age of Extinction truly is.

Box Office Predictions: Transformers 4 Will Be Massive...But How Massive?

In Box Office Predictions, I take a look at the forthcoming weekend and see how new releases and holdovers will fare.

Unless the Frankie Valli fanboys come out in droves this weekend, the Autobots will wage their war against the Decepticons to humongous numbers. The primary question of course is how big this movie can possibly be.

The List!!!: Seth Macfarlanes Top 5 Vocal Performances

Love him or hate him, Seth Macfarlanes had an undeniably huge impact on pop culture. With his new movie A Million Ways To Die In The West hitting theaters today, let's take a look at his Top 5 vocal performances and admire some of his best work.

In no particular order:

Stewie Griffin: Family Guy has pretty much become one of the worst shows on TV, but Stewie remains the one element that consistently delivers, with Seth able to deliver some truly outrageous lines through that unmistakable voice with just the right balance of arrogant detachment and unexplainable lovableness. To boot, Stewie seems to be the only character that's able to create believable emotional resonance that feels earned and not cheap. For any other show Stewie would be a feat, but in garbage like Family Guy, it's practically a revelation.

Stan Smith: He's a cold blooded killer, a man sexually aroused by horses and unnaturally close to his mother; he's Stan Smith and he's easily one of the most surprisingly successful elements of American Dad! Although at the start of the program he was nothing more than a cheap stereotype, Stan's now developed into a fleshed out character worthy of being put on this list, if only for terrific lines like "Looks like I just picked a bouquet of oopsie-daisies"

Roger The Alien: There's a lot of bizarre elements in programming Seth Macfarlane has a hand in (and admittedly, Seth had very little to do developmentally with the show Roger is in), but Roger tops them all. An alien obsessed with disguises, Roger brings out a new personality each episode that somehow always brings the laughs (I particularly like his female wedding planner persona that somehow has two adult kids) Even on his own, he always meshes well with the Smith clan, especially with Klaus the goldfish, with whom he generates many hearty laughs.

Ted: In the two years since it came out, Ted has remained surprisingly stupendous, it's laughs never wearing off and the dynamic between Mark Wahlberg and the titular raunchy teddy bear never getting old. That dynamic owes a lot to Seth's performance which makes the smart decision to make Ted actually lovable, thus making the twos friendship believable. And don't worry; Seth still makes Ted hilarious without making him too over the top disgusting, making Ted a nicely well made character in a similarly well made film.

Johann Krauss: Now here's one you might not actually know was Seth Macfarlane, but yes, in Guillermo Del Toro's best movie, the voice of Quagmire interacts with Ron Perlman's amazing red hero as they protect the Earth from fantastical forces. Macfarlane makes a nice addition to the cast, with a German accent we don't hear the voice actor pull out very often allowing the characters intellect to be stylized in amusing ways that clash with Hellboy's more brute tactics. But his best moment comes at the end, when he finally tells off Jeffrey Tambors character in an extremely hillarious manner.