Mermaids! Monstrous Murder! Musical Numbers! It's All Here In The Lure!

Remember that brief period in the early 2010's when we had gritty reimaginings of fairy tales? It didn't last long, mostly because more classical retellings of those fairy tales proved to be far more financially lucrative, but for a moment, we got just enough of these titles to qualify as a mini-trend in American cinema. Jack The Giant Slayer, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Snow White & The Huntsman all emerged as attempts to rework children's fairy tales into dark PG-13 or R-rated cinema. In the end though, most of these attempts to be "adult" just ended up feeling derivative of other movies or tv shows and resulted in lackluster motion pictures (I do remember Giant Slayer being decent, to be fair).

Kogonada Makes an Impressive Debut Effort As A Writer/Director With Columbus

You'd be surprised by what topics can help connect people. Sometimes a common interest in the most unusual things can help unite strangers. That's part of the appeal of all those fan conventions centered around niche interests, a way for people to amalgamate around what they love. For the lead characters of Columbus, it's architecture found around Columbus, Indiana that manages to bring these two strangers together during pivotal moments in their lives. Another person may just see assorted buildings in a city in Indiana, but for these two human beings, these buildings offer a chance for some much-needed human connections during tumultuous periods in their lives.

Hostiles Tries To Be A Woke Western But It Can't Quite Get It's Eyes Open

I've been beating the drum on director Scott Cooper for some time now, mainly thanks to how highly I thought of his 2013 feature Out of The Furnace (his 2009 motion picture Crazy Heart is also notably good). Thought it received an overall divisive critical reception upon initial release, I myself thought it was a great movie that managed to take the basic premise of a revenge action movie and imbue both a terrific Christian Bale performance and thoughtful grimness into it. Taking my love for his past works in mind, it breaks my heart to say that Scott Cooper's newest movie Hostiles, handily his most ambitious feature yet in terms of themes and scope, is a mess and an unpleasant one at that.

A Movie As Well-Made As The Passionate Friends Has Got A Friend In Me

To quote Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (which itself was quoting a passage from the book The Natural History of Nonsense): "We might be through with the past but the past ain't through with us." That's true under any circumstances but it's especially true in regards to the lead characters of The Passionate Friends, who are all entangled in how Mary (Ann Todd) is becoming heavily infatuated with a figure from her past much to the detriment of her present circumstances. Even when seemingly important people and events fade into the best, they can still manage to be impactful well into the present.

Maze Runner Ends It's Franchise With Solid Box Office, Hostiles And Padmaavat Exceeds Expectations

And so, the exit of the maze has been found. Maze Runner: The Death Cure ended the Maze Runner franchise on a solid note this weekend by grossing $23.5 million, down 27% from the opening weekend of the first Maze Runner film and down 22% from the opening weekend of the second Maze Runner movie. Despite being down from its predecessors, this is a fine debut for the final Maze Runner motion picture given the two-and-a-half-year gap between its predecessors (only a year separated the first two Maze Runner movies) and the difference between opening weekends of it's second and third installments were considerably better than the one seen by the second and third Divergent movies. That $62 million budget (which is much higher than it's predecessors, likely due to accounting for filming having to restart after the movies star, Dylan O'Brien, suffered a life-threatening accident on set) looms large, but thankfully, this series has always done well internationally. Looks like the Maze Runner movies are ending on a fine note that the Divergent movies would be green with envy over.

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.

12 Strong Goes to The Front Lines of Forgettable Cinema

It's January, so the massive box office success of both Lone Survivor and American Sniper dictates it's time for another action war movie based on a real-life incident that occurred to U.S. armed forces (or mercenaries in the case of 13 Hours) in the Iraq War. 2018's entry in this subgenre is 12 Strong (the trailers add the sentence The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers to the title), which is all about a group of U.S. soldiers called Task Force Dagger that's led by Captain Mitch Nelson (Chris Hemsworth). Nelson, whose only led the team in training situations, has recently taken a desk job that'll allow him to spend more time with his wife and young kid but those plans take a turn once the World Trade Center attacks occur.

Call Me By Your Name Starts Off Slow Before Focusing On An Absorbing Romance That's Just Peachy

For his fifth (excluding documentaries) feature-length directorial effort, director Luca Guadagnino turns his eye to helming an adaptation of the novel Call Me By Your Name (penned by James Ivory) into a motion picture of the same name. Taking place in Guadagino's home country of Italy, this novel is all about the story of Elio Perlman (Timothee Chalamet), a 17-year-old who finds himself living in a luxurious house owned by his kindly father, Mr. Perlamn (Michael Stuhlbarg), but also struck by boredom as he waits for the summer days to run out and grapples with a local tendency for people to hide who they are (his mom hides their families Jewish heritage while a girl Elio talks to frequently says she veils her love for literature). The introduction of a new houseguest in the form of his dad's former student Oliver (Armie Hammer) only seems to add irritation to Elio's summer since he and Oliver don't get along at first.

Paul Thomas Anderson's Sprawling Magnolia Is Incredibly Engrossing And Unique Cinema

There is no attempt to ease the viewer into the world of Magnolia, the film is just off to the races once the first frame comes up on-screen. Before you know it, the audience is tossed around multiple different storylines happening in close proximity to one another with a similar bleak yet darkly humorous tone permeating the majority of the individual subplots. As the camera frantically moves around from one person to the next, it may seem like this will be too much too fast for a viewer to process but in actuality, it's all too easy to adjust oneself to the unique atmosphere of Magnolia and the similarly idiosyncratic way it tells it's myriad of stories that all transpire over the course of a single day.

Phantom Thread Is Clothed In Delightfully Off-Kilter Material

If you thought any of Paul Thomas Anderson's past films were too unusual for your tastes, buckle up, because he's put the weird into overdrive for his newest motion picture, Phantom Thread. Taking cues from filmmakers ranging from David Lean to Alfred Hitchcock to Yorgos Lanthimos, the newest Paul Thomas Anderson motion picture is an utterly bizarre concoction that shares more with past efforts made by this filmmaker than just being on the unorthodox side. Like other Paul Thomas Anderson movies, Phantom Thread is thoroughly fun to watch, specifically in how it channels Anderson's own Boogie Nights in having this escalating sense of craziness in its plot.

The Documentary Spielberg Looks At An Iconic Career In An Engaging Manner

This morning, the nominations for the 90th Academy Awards were announced and among the nine films nominated for Best Picture was The Post, Steven Spielberg's newest directorial effort. With The Post securing a Best Picture nod, this meant, as pointed out by Mark Harris on Twitter, that Spielberg has now had eleven of his movies nominated for Best Picture, the second highest amount of movies a single director has ever had nominated in Best Picture (William Wyler has the most with 13 of his features scoring Best Picture nominations). That's an astonishing accomplishment and it's far from the only place where Spielberg's career has been marked with great success as anyone who's been to a movie theater in the last four decades can attest.

Bet On The Actors Excelling And The Camerawork Underwhelming In Molly's Game

Aaron Sorkin has been writing movies and TV shows for 26 years now and somehow, in that entire period of time, he's never directed anything before his 2017 feature film Molly's Game. This is especially regarding his TV work, the guy was the creator of four different TV shows, one of which (The West Wing) ran for over 150 episodes, and he never once directed an episode of any of these programs despite frequently writing the scripts for individual episodes. Taking all of that into consideration, it's utterly shocking he's taken this long to get behind the camera but he's done just that with the motion picture Molly's Game.

Douglas Laman's 90th Academy Awards Nominees Predictions (PART TWO)

We did Part One back on Saturday, now it's time for the second part of my predictions for who gets nominated for what at this year's Academy Awards ceremony!

For The Third Weekend In A Row, Jumanji Tops The Box Office While 12 Strong Starts Out Decently And Den Of Thieves "YAWK! YAWK! YAWK! YAWK!"'s It's Way Past Expectations

Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle continued to impress at the domestic box office in its fifth weekend of release as it eased down only 28% to gross another $20 million, the seventh biggest fifth weekend in history. With a domestic cume of $316.9 million, it appears this Jake Kasdan directed motion picture is headed for a final domestic gross in the vicinity of $370-380 million. It' astonishing how this one continues to leapfrog past expectations, a clear sign this one has incredible word-of-mouth working in its favor.

Steven Spielberg Kicked Off His Career In Thrilling Style With Duel

Before The Post, before Schindler's List, before even Jaws and The Sugarland Express, Steven Spielberg directed Duel, a TV movie of the week that got expanded into an 89-minute-long feature-length cut for theatrical exhibition domestically and abroad (that longer cut is the one reviewed here). Spielberg's earliest directorial credits were all television work (including a segment in a horror anthology TV movie that starred Joan Crawford!) but this was the first time he got to be behind the camera on a project that reached the runtime of a typical feature-length motion picture, setting the stage for his career in directing theatrical films that was yet to come.

Douglas Laman's 90th Academy Awards Nominees Predictions (PART ONE)

The nominees for the 90th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday. Everyone from Variety to The Hollywood Reporter to award-centric websites like Gold Derby have been doing their final round of Oscar nominee predictions, so what the hey, I'll embrace conformity and also join in on predicting who gets nominated for what at this year's Oscars. Just a heads up before we go forward, these Oscar nominee predictions are not based on my own personal desires for what should be nominated, but rather based on numerous other factors like who's getting the most buzz in the industry, who has been nominated at crucial recent award shows like the Producer's Guild of America Awards and so on.

Prepare For Oodles of Laughs And Kindness, Paddington 2 Is Here!

This perception (which is, as so many pieces of entertainment from decades past can attest, is far from new) that films or tv shows aimed at children must be as loud, grating and hip as possible to attract their attention is a thoroughly insulting concept, especially in regards to children themselves. Yes, there are programs that fit such a bill that kids like but it's not the only way to create pieces of pop culture that youngsters enjoy. The first Paddington movie, about a small bear from Peru who goes to London to live with a human family, from three years ago threw off the shackles of default family entertainment and embraced with, charm and an infectious sense of sweetness instead. The result was something shockingly enjoyable that succeeded as much as a comedy as it did as a family movie.

Dean Works Better As A Contemplation of Coping With Grief Than As A Comedy

Dean is the feature film directorial debut for comedian Demetri Martin, who also writes and stars in this project which revolves around Martin playing artist Dean who is struggling with coming to terms with the death of his mother. His Dad, Robert (Kevin Kline), is trying to move forward by selling their old family home, engaging in new exercise routines and keeping in omnipresent contact with his son (which is made all the more easier by the use of his new handy-dandy smartphone). Dean, on the other hand, is looking to be more reclusive as he shuts himself out from his father and tries to avoid fully confronting the internal emotional pain that his mom's passing has caused for him.

In Laman's Terms: The Queer of The Dawn of Cinema

An image from the pivotal 1919 feature Different From The Others

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

"Somebody, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it." - James Baldwin

Have you seen the new trailer for Love, Simon? If not, check it out below cuz it's all kinds of sweet and heartwarming, really makes me hope the movie itself is awesome!

Menashe Provides A Thoughtful And Charming Character Study

The tale of the titular lead character of Menashe (played by Menashe Lustig) does not begin with a bang. We do not see the tragic circumstances that led to the death of Menashe's wife, rather, we pick up a short period of time after this event has occurred and follow Menashe as he attempts to pick up the pieces of his life and raise his son, Rieven (Ruben Niborski), as best he can. Menashe, raised as a Hasidic Jewish individual, finds the traditions of this religion bumping into his plans to raise his son, as elders in his community, as well as his son's uncle Eizik (Yoel Weisshaus), believe Rieven should be raised in a more traditional household with two parents instead of having just one guardian whose barely getting by as it is.