An Assortment of Talented Actors Can't Save Gringo From It's Messy Script

Gringo is trying to be something different. Writers Anthony Tambakis & Matthew Stone and first-time feature film director Nash Edgerton clearly want Gringo to be a dark comedy occasionally interrupted by brief bits of action that has a glib view of the morality of the rich and powerful and has a sad-sack everyman protagonist that Jimmy Stewart would have played once upon a time. That's an unorthodox mixture of elements to put into one movie and that audacious spirit is to be admired. But in executing such a unique concoction, Gringo, unfortunately, winds up as a misfire, commendable artistic intentions can't mitigate the tiresome scattered nature of this project. 

We Didn't Start The (Free) Fire, It Was Always Burning Since The Bullets Were Firing

I've never been much of a gun guy in my everyday life (even as a Texan, a Cabella's store is more puzzling than enticing to me) but I never have an issue with gun-oriented movies, especially when they're top quality like the John Wick films or the first and fourth Die Hard movies (the two best ones in that franchise....come at me internet!). Ben Wheatley's Free Fire doesn't reach those heights of quality but still manages to be some solid grisly fun. It's a shoot-em-up that keeps things simple (maybe a little too simple), confined and directly fixated on two things: over-the-top characters and bullets flying everywhere.

The Hollars Is An Excruciatingly Bad Parody Of Conventional American Indie Movies That...Wait, This Isn't A Parody???

When something tries to be personal in a very un-personal (for lack of a better word) way, the resulting experience is the very definition of "awkward". Trying to watch a person or a story or even just some manufactured item try to be something it's very plainly not is extremely uncomfortable to witness. That emotion basically sums up watching The Hollars, a movie that tries to tell a small-scale story of a dysfunctional family coming back together during a time of crisis very much wants to pluck at your heartstrings and make you laugh with the various quirks of the numerous family members, but it's trying to tell this potentially personal story in the most bland and generic way. None of it has any depth or real insight to it, it very much is the awkward experience of watching a movie try to be something it's not.

Hardcore Henry Review

If you've even had only the briefest exposure to the advertising campaign of Hardcore Henry, you likely are all too aware that the films big claim-to-fame is that it was shot in a first-person style of filming, putting the viewer at the center of the story of Henry, a man whose awoken with no memory but has been given various technological enhancements in his body that make him an unstoppable killing machine. Those upgrades are a positive, but less uplifting is that a very bad man by the name of Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) has kidnapped Henry's wife, Estelle (Haley Bennett).

See The Next Stage Of Robotics In Trailer For Chappie

I've always loved robots in entertainment. Jaegars from Pacific Rim, the Mech suits from Avatar, WALL-E from...well, y'know. My fascinating from these guys I think comes from how they seem like the ultimate progression of tools and technologies we have today. Plus, many of them look cool. Those two qualities are in full force in the trailer for Neil Blomkamp's (the director of District 9 and Elysium) next feature, Chappie. Watch the trailer below!

Oldboy (2013) Review

There's actually a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff about Oldboy that are kind of fascinating to consider, at least to a film nerd like me. For instance, this was the first non-Neil Blomkamp directed film Sharlto Copley appeared in since 2010's The A-Team. Also, director Spike Lee apparently had a lot of conflicts with the films distributor FilmDistrict, a studio that released this over Thanksgiving 2013 to minimal promotion and only a 583 theater count.  And finally, this was the last movie FilmDistrict released as a studio, with several completed movies they already made like That Awkward Moment and Walk of Shame being taken over by Focus Features.