I’ve mentioned before that every year there seems to be one breakout horror film that critics rave about. Over the last five years, we’ve had The Babadook, It Follows, The Witch, Get Out, and now with Hereditary standing out as 2018’s landmark horror movie. Another connection between the films is that I’ve ended up loving them all and Hereditary is one of the best to date.
WARNING – I will have to discuss a pretty big spoiler that occurs in the first act, I would try to avoid it, but it factors into the film quite heavily. It’s within the first 10-15 minutes, so it’s not too big but here’s the warning anyway.
Looking back at the history of the first Deadpool and how long it took to actually get made I forgave it for some of its shortcomings, namely in that while it was a good comedy, it lacked a strong story to make it good film overall. As such it doesn’t hold up as well on revisits, but is still a funny movie, by comparison Deadpool 2 has a much stronger narrative as well a much more impressive action set-pieces. Ironically, it’s the jokes that come up short. Maybe now living in a world where films like Logan and Infinity War have changed the comic-book movie landscape, the immaturity of Deadpool doesn’t sit as well with me, or maybe I’m just a pretentious ass who can’t have any fun.
Let’s find out.
10 years ago, Marvel Studios released Iron Man. It was a funny, action-packed romp with a charismatic lead and in any other time would’ve come and gone and possibly been looked back on as a better than expected comic-book movie. But in 2008, Marvel gave us a promise, a post credit scene that nearly everyone missed talking about “The Avengers Initiative,” and with those three words, The MCU was born. 10 years and 19 films later, it has stood out as one of the biggest, possibly even the most successful franchises of all-time and while it hasn’t been perfect all the way, the highs easily outweigh the lows.
And Infinity War might just be the crowning jewel in Marvel’s crown. Continue reading
As a writer, Alex Garland has had a hand in some of the best sci-fi of the 21st Century with 28 Days Later, Sunshine, and Dredd under his belt. He continued that trend into his directorial debut, Ex_Machina, which ended up as my top film for that year. When his latest film, Annihilation, got in the news for being considering too ‘smart’ for the average audience and sent straight to Netflix everywhere except the US, Canada, and China, you couldn’t help but wonder exactly how smart Garland had made his film. Especially, when you factor in that both Garland and one of the producers refused to bow into the studio demands to dumb the movie down.
Having now finally seen it, I’m glad Garland stuck to his guns because Annihilation is one of the most unapologetic cases of Hard Sci-Fi I’ve seen for a while.
The arrival of T’Challa in Civil War was a welcome addition to the MCU and his arc provided the film with a neutral viewpoint away from the already established Captain America and Iron Man. Now with Infinity War looming, the prince of Wakanda has been given his own film to help establish himself and Wakanda into the MCU. The result is one of Marvel’s best, and possibly their most politically important movie to date.
While the Western Genre will never see the likes of Sergio Leone or John Ford again, there have been enough great modern Westerns to satisfy the fans, from critically acclaimed pieces like The Revenant and The Assassination of Jesse James to more genre focused flicks such as Bone Tomahawk and 3:10 To Yuma. The Ballad Of Lefty Brown fits more into the latter – there’s definitely an appreciation for the genre and for those more familiar with Westerns a strong execution keeps some of the more familiar elements from feeling stale.
As divisive and overused Rotten Tomatoes has become in the recent year, it’s hard to ignore Lady Bird beating the record for most positive reviews to remain at 100% (164 positives beating Toy Story 3’s previous record of 163). While it since has dropped to 99%, it’s still only at 1 Rotten score with 213 Fresh reviews in its favor. With that level of acclaim is worth taking note of, so I figured I’d give it a shot and see what it had to offer. And while not the best film of the year, it can definitely stand out as one of 2017’s strongest offerings with career highlights from Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan.
