Archive
THEATRICAL REVIEW: Avengers: Age of Ultron
Directed by: Joss Whedon
Produced by: Kevin Feige
Written by: Joss Whedon
Edited by: Jeffrey Ford, Lisa Lassek
Cinematography by: Ben Davis
Music by: Brian Tyler, Danny Elfman
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johasson, Jeremy Renner, James Spader, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Linda Cardellini, Claudia Kim, Don Cheadle, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Anthony Mackie, Hayley Atwell, Idris Elba, Stellan Skarsgård, Andy Serkis, Julie Delpy, Kerry Condon
Based on the Marvel Comics
Year: 2015
I don’t think anything will compare to the anticipation that led up to the release of Marvel’s first Avengers movie. When Samuel L. Jackson showed up at the end of the first Iron Man back in 2008 and basically announced Marvel’s intentions to create a cinematic universe in which pretty much all of their characters would coexist in one massive multimedia project, each subsequent addition to this universe has basically been made with the goal of getting people excited for the next while being fairly to immensely entertaining in its own right. This is something that could have easily imploded on itself, particularly if Marvel screwed it up by either playing it too safe and mucking their characters up in order to cater to audiences who might not be willing to accept them or by getting caught up in their own hype and letting the films coast on brand recognition and not paying attention to quality control. Read more…
2014 IN REVIEW: Everything in Between That I’ve Seen
Finally, we come to the films that I actually did see! As with the films I didn’t see, these films will come at you in three parts: the films that were just somewhere in the middle in terms of quality, the films I greatly disliked, and the films I really enjoyed.
I use those qualitative terms just to avoid confusion over what I’m ranking here. The films in this section range from generally bad to generally quite good, but never elevating to excellence or making me fall in love with them or making me hate them with a passion. That being said, I didn’t expect to like some of the films here as much as I ended up liking them, and, of course, I was letdown by others I actually was kind of looking forward to.
If you don’t see the movie here and didn’t see it in the list of films I didn’t see, then you can almost certainly be guaranteed to find them on one of my next two lists, as this is just a portion of the 121 total films I ended up seeing from 2014 as of this writing, whether in theatres, on DVD/Blu-Ray, or through streaming. Read more…
REVIEW: Albert Nobbs
Directed by: Rodrigo García
Produced by: Glenn Close, Bonnie Curtis, John Goff
Written by: Glenn Close, John Banville, Gabriella Prekop (screenplay), István Szabó (story)
Edited by: Steven Weisberg
Cinematography by: Michael McDonough
Music by: Brian Byrne
Starring: Glenn Close, Mia Wasikowska, Aaron Taylor Johnson, Janet McTeer, Pauline Collins, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Brendan Gleeson, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Mark Williams
Based on the novella The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs by George Moore
Year: 2011
Every now and then, I find myself feeling as though I get myself into a rut and keep watching one type of movie over and over again, possibly even without realizing it but still getting fatigued by my usual tendencies, and so I poll my friends for their recommendations. Usually I get some fairly common movies, but every now and then, I’ll get an oddball recommendation that makes me think, “Yeah, sure, that’s pretty different!” It’s resulted in unlikely reviews such as K-PAX, Ballet Shoes, Macross II, and Oscar – all movies I wouldn’t have been likely to review had they not been recommended by friends. And so, after tiring of writing about big sci-fi epics from my seven-film review stint of the theatrically released Star Wars films, I sought out some more out of left field recommendations – this time from the friend who recommended Oscar. As far as films that aren’t big sci-fi epics go, Albert Nobbs, a film about a 19th century woman who lives as a man and works as a waiter at a luxury hotel which had just so happened to have recently been added to Netflix’s streaming library, certainly fit the bill. Read more…
2013 IN REVIEW: Neither the Best, Nor the Worst Films I Saw
I apparently watched a lot more movies in 2013 than I had realized… The films below represent not the worst, not the best, but certainly not always good, but also certainly not always bad movies that I saw in and from 2013. Only films released theatrically were counted, and film festival debuts did not count. Some of these films were truly great, others were truly awful, but none of them were seen fit to be placed in “the worst,” “the best,” nor “my favorite” categories. And so, they go here. Here are some of the films I watched in 2013, in order of release! Read more…
The Viewer's Commentary 