armando vanegas

Review – Waves (2019)

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by Armando Vanegas

Waves is the new epic family drama from every millennial’s favorite movie studio A24 and writer/director, Trey Edward Shults. Going into it, I was excited. Mainly because it was Sterling K. Brown aka Randall from This is Us in what looked like a lead role. Also, the trailer, like any for an A24 movie, looked like this was another success in their long ring of successes. I don’t know anything about Shults as a filmmaker, although I heard very good things about his previous movies, It Comes at Night and Krisha. Look, as a black person, there’s not a lot of family dramas in the mold of Terence Malick and Punch Drunk Love coming our way, so the fact that was a movie about a successful black family having nothing to do with them being black in addition to some beautiful cinematography was exciting. I was getting The Place Beyond the Pines feelings as I was hearing about the details about it and the way people were being so elusive about what it specifically was about. It’s cool that movies like this or Sorry to Bother You or Moonlight are finally getting the chance to have a platform to tell stories featuring black centric casts, yet making the stories universal. Having seen the final product, I appreciate what Shults, who happens to be white, did with the ideas he had of telling this story about these very specific individuals and it paid off very well.

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Review – A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019)

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By Armando Vanegas

Having Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers is a great idea for a movie. In fact, it’s a surprise that having America’s most loved and friendliest movie star playing one of the best human beings to ever exist took this long to even happen. But from there, the work should already be done for you and you don’t have to try that hard. Director Marielle Heller, though, knows a cool idea isn’t always enough to maintain a movie. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood wisely decides to use what we know about the children’s TV show host, Fred Rogers, to create a character study focusing on how the incredible power he had on people could affect real change, even in one person.

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Review – Good Boys (2019)

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by Armando Vanegas

Studio comedies are in a weird place right now. For some time, there was a time where every other week, there was a comedy coming out that looked good to me. Most of the time, I seemed pretty pleased with what I got. Even the worst ones had something to giggle at, for the most part. Perhaps the fact that Judd Apatow had smash hits with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up made a lot of studios wake up for a bit and try harder for a little while. Nowadays, I barely see many come out and most of the recent ones that do underwhelm me. It could also be more that I changed or the movies changed or most likely, both. Whatever it was, Good Boys has come around to bring some much needed laughs to the movies. While it seemed like the kind of movie that was going to follow the trend of being forgettable, I heard some good buzz that indicated that this was going to be a fun time and it delivered on that. The trailer wasn’t much of an indicator of its quality since it wanted me to think it was funny solely because it featured kids using profanity. I wondered how much that could carry a movie. As it so happens, there is more to the movie than that. While it does follow a lot of the same beats as other coming-of age comedies like Superbad or even this year’s Booksmart, it’s a movie that’s concerned with just making you laugh. If you’re looking to have a hilarious time at the movies, Good Boys will do the trick.

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Review – Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

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by Armando Vanegas

For a long time, Marvel movies have been very conventional and safe in terms of how the stories played out. I’m fine with them, but I find myself wanting more out of these movies than they’ve given me. Over the last few years, these movies have gotten more comfortable than ever with sticking to the formula and I find myself feeling jaded with some of these installments in terms of how invested I get into the story and situations these characters find themselves in. I still enjoy these movies because I do love the characters even if I’m not fully in love with the movies they inhabit all the time. I just wish that the people behind the scenes took more chances with these movies. It will be no surprise to many that Spider-Man: Far from Home is more of the same from the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far. However, there’s a sense of fun and excitement throughout that makes it a blast to watch from beginning to end.

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Review – Divorce : Season 3 (2019)

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by Armando Vanegas

Divorce returned earlier this summer for a third season on HBO, which is great. The bad news is that it’s the last season and also has a very short amount of episodes. No matter the quantity, it remains an effectively bittersweet slice of life comedy about how two people try to maintain an amicable relationship during divorce and it stays that way until the end. I can already tell you’re at the edge of your seat. Understandably, it’s not as exciting as white walkers and dragons, but it’s interesting in its own way. Considering how quick the announcement came just before the season premiered could mean it was taken out just before it reached its logical endpoint. Having seen it, this is a pretty nice way for the series to leave on as it still maintains the same high quality humor and drama that it’s brought us in such a short run.

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Review – Brightburn (2019)

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by Armando Vanegas

Brightburn tries to present something that surprisingly hasn’t become a movie in this superhero-obsessed culture we now live in. What if Superman was evil? There’s a lot to do with this premise as villains are usually more interesting than the heroes in terms of their backstory and motivations. The movie follows Brandon Breyer, a seemingly perfectly behaved young boy who deals with new feelings and emotions when he turns 12 after he develops superpowers out of nowhere. Things get tense in the town as Brandon begins to cause trouble by attacking other people with his powers.

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Review – Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

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by Armando Vanegas

I’ll never forget where I was when I first saw David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. I was 13 years old in a pre-streaming world with the movie being the easiest way to access the show thanks to cable television. Seeing parodies of the show and the fact that I was a dedicated TV Guide reader, where the magazine often touted it as one of the great shows of our time, made me more curious about checking it out. When I finally sat down to finally enter this world on a late summer night in 2006, I despised it so much that I wished that I was in a theater with a drink so I could throw something at the screen with the nonsense I was being shown. Little did I know, for David Lynch’s stuff, being weird and nonsensical was a constant in his filmography.

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Review – Captain Marvel (2019)

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by Armando Vanegas

Captain Marvel is the latest movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the unforgettable events that occurred in Avengers: Infinity War. Since Infinity War left things in a way that made the audience curious about what would happen next, it was interesting to see what they come up with. All things considered, the next movie had to be something notable and memorable to leave the audience wanting more. Being that Captain Marvel was their first solo female superhero movie, I wanted to see what they could do with this material, and see if this would satisfying my appetite until Endgame came out. DC did a good job in creating an entertaining movie with Wonder Woman, which handled similar material of women who are able to be fighters in their own world and struggling to find their place and humanity in ours. While it’s admirable that Marvel finally put a female superhero at the forefront in one of their movies, this is still a “by the numbers” origin story that you’ve seen time and time again. Still, it’s watchable and it will be pleasing for those just wanting a movie that just cuts to the chase to provide a mostly standalone Sci-Fi action adventure movie. Marvel competently made a movie that seemed to hit the mark for a lot of people and that’s cool. It will be most agreeable for those who are either the most casual Marvel fans or the diehards who always rewatch all the movies leading up to their latest chapter.

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Review – Rushmore (1998)

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by Armando Vanegas

With Bottle Rocket being a critical hit, it only made sense for another studio like Touchstone Pictures to come calling and give Wes Anderson the skills to become the filmmaker that he is today. Due to its larger budget and higher profile, it’s no doubt that Rushmore is truly a Wes Anderson movie. I remember it being the movie that introduced me to Wes Anderson. Because of his unique style, no movie was like it at the time to me. Not to mention that it stood out from many other high school movies of its time such as Can’t Hardly Wait or American Pie. He knows how to use his style to create an immersive world that’s so meticulously detailed that he’s able to flesh out the characters and the story in a more convenient and subtle way than other filmmakers would probably do. Watching it now was somewhat unexpected. While I don’t think I can tout it as the masterpiece I once did, it was still an entertaining movie.

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Review – Patriot Season 1 & 2

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by Armando Vanegas

Amazon has a streaming service called Prime Video or Amazon Prime Video or Amazon Prime or whatever they’re calling it now. I don’t know if you know that. How else would you know that? Unless you read your monthly bank statement that says they took money from you if you ever bought a subscription to them. On the one hand, Amazon is wonderful for purchasing products of all kinds. On the other, they really gotta do some work in promoting their streaming service because it has some great content. It was just blind luck that I came across Patriot, a brilliantly surreal and hilarious spy comedy from Steven Conrad, the writer of the Will Smith drama The Pursuit of Happyness (probably the furthest removed from his style), the similarly surreal Nicolas Cage dramedy The Weather Man, and the just as surreal John C. Reilly/Seann William Scott buddy dramedy, The Promotion. Even though I liked those aforementioned movies, I didn’t know what to expect as the trailer didn’t exactly grab me. Neither did the trailers for their other shows. I just wanted to try some Amazon programming and this was the one that seemed relatively interesting to me. What the show accomplishes by the end should make it a must see for people wanting something weirder and more out there in their TV choices.

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