Luce Is Morally Complex And Fascinating Fare

The titular lead character of Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is an ideal High School student. The adopted son of Amy (Naomi Watts) and Peter Edgar (Tim Roth) is in every extracurricular you can think of, he's a great speaker, he gets along equally well with his fellow students as he does with his teachers. Well, most of his teachers at least. Luce doesn't really get along well with his English teacher, Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer). Up to this point, Luce's just been mildly annoyed with his teacher. But things take a turn for the worse when Wilson calls Amy into her classroom to inform her that her son has written an extremely disturbing and violent essay and has also been keeping illegal fireworks in his locker.

Good Luck Chuck, With A Movie Like This One, You're Gonna Need It

We've all heard of the movie Rocky, but do you know about the real-life boxer who helped inspire that famous film character? Despite the title leading you to think it was a film adaptation of a Zachary Levi NBC sitcom or perhaps a biopic of Chuck Berry, Chuck is all about the life and times of Chuck Wepner (portrayed here by Liev Schreiber), a boxer who got to fight Muhammad Ali (Pooch Hall) in a high profile fight that Wepner ended up losing. You might think that might have been shattering to Wepner, but he took the loss in stride and ended up becoming a minor celebrity due to him managing to briefly knock Ali off his feet during the fight.

The Glass Castle Is Admirable For Its Thematic Aspirations And Is Less So In Its Execution Of Said Aspirations

At the dawn of this decade, the general populace mostly knew Brie Larson as Envy Adams in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and as a recurring heavy presence on the Showtime drama United States Of Tara. In the years since though, she's starred in a number of acclaimed motion pictures hailing from all sorts of genres, won an Oscar and been cast as a Marvel superhero. Perhaps the movie that really helped her start her ascension to movie star was the 2013 drama Short Term 12, an outstanding feature full of lovable characters and an emphatic spirit that made human beings out of its troubled characters. She reunites with that films director, Destin Daniel Cretton, for the new drama The Glass Castle, which, sadly, is a major step down from the quality of Short Term 12.

The Book Of Henry Has Lots Of Strange Plot Turns But What's The Point Of It All?

SPOILERS FOR THE BOOK OF HENRY WITHIN

While the film geek community was aware that director Collin Trevorrow had a movie called The Book of Henry on the docket for release in 2017, the feature didn't gain all that much in the way of attention until it's bonkers first trailer was released, revealing the movies bonkers-looking plotline and immediately rocketing itself onto many people's radars. I'll freely admit to being one such person whose interest got piqued by the absolutely tonally all-over-the-map trailer which combined super-inventive kid movie tropes with Naomi Watts as a sniper action. The biggest question remaining for me and many others after watching that trailer was whether or not the actual movie itself would be this crazy....

3 Generations Is A Scattered And Clumsy Mess

3 Generations was supposed to come out in a general theatrical release domestically all the way back in September 2015 with the title of About Ray. After it garnered a critical thrashing at the Toronto International Film Festival, The Weinstein Company pulled it from its release schedule and it basically vanished. Then, earlier this year, it was abruptly announced that the studio would be releasing About Ray under its current title and in a smaller theatrical release under their Radius-TWC banner, which had been discontinued for over a year but was briefly brought back to life solely for the purpose of getting this feature finally released.

Go Down The Scenic Route In The Enchantingly Unique And Abstract Mulholland Drive

Sight & Sound Voyage Entry #36
Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #28                                                                                                                                                                                
SPOILERS AHEAD

Well, if anyone thought Blue Velvet, with its plot that hinges on a human ear in a field and Dennis Hopper's crazed baddie, was too weird, Mulholland Drive is not gonna be the movie for you. I would have really loved to see this movie in its theatrical release, as I'm pretty sure audiences would have been left bamboozled at best and likely asking movie theater attendees for their money back in an angry fashion. Me? My main reaction once Mulholland Drive was one of being impressed by what an absorbing experience David Lynch had concocted, even if I needed to do a little reading up on Wikipedia afterwards to fully figure out what was going on in this movies final scene.

Shut In Traps Audiences In Inescapable Boredom

For a thriller, Shut In is sorely lacking in actual thrills. Actually, it's more likely to instill a sense of tedium in prospective audiences rather than dread or unease. It doesn't even manage to be a uniquely bad movie, it's just endlessly dull even with a couple of nonsensical plot twists stashed away in its bare-bones story. Poor Naomi Watts and Jacob Tremblay, they deserve so much better than this chilly idiocy to star in. At least Tremblay will have a failed movie project he can joke about with interviewers once the next Academy Awards ceremony rolls around.

The Divergent Series: Insurgent Review

To Live And Divergent In LA

In the year since Divergent was released, so much has changed for the cast. Shailiene Woodley (along with Divergent co-star Ansel Elgort) dazzle in The Fault In Our Stars, Miles Teller starred in one of the best movies of the past few years, Whiplash, and Theo James did.....uh, I think he signed on to star in a reboot of the Underworld movies. Simply put, these guys have done some great work since the first Divergent film, which makes seeing them return to this franchise disappointing, especially considering how lackluster it is.

St. Vincent Review

After all of his party crashing, french fry thievery and Space Jam cameos, it sorta feels weird to see Bill Murray headline a by-the-numbers feature like St. Vincent. It's not that he's bad in it, or that the film is some monstrosity (it's really not), but it's just sorta routine and lacking in the inventive spark that marks the works of filmmakers Murray usually collaborates with like Wes Anderson.

Birdman Review

On A Wing And A Prayer

Films have the power to say things of incomparable substance. Some of the greatest filmmakers of all-time have used the medium of cinema to bring to life the kind of movies that help shape a generation via their underlying subtext and themes. It's neat to see any person undertake the mission of making a film that says something truly important, and it's pretty obvious that Birdman director (who also serves as one of the features four writers) Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu truly believes with all of his heart and soul that he's saying something meaningful within each and every frame of Birdman. I'm sure it's meaningful to him, and more power to him if it is. But for me, the message of the motion picture is like the movie itself; cluttered and underwhelming.