Review – Bottle Rocket (1996)

by Armando Vanegas

Sometimes, I get bored reviewing new movies so for some reason, I wanted to go through all the Wes Anderson movies in chronological order in the meantime. It’s just something that gives me a challenge to do and maybe there will be unexpected feelings and unique thoughts I never saw coming. So, without further delay, let’s begin with his 1996 debut, Bottle Rocket. I remember this being a movie that got a lot of play on Comedy Central back in the day and it was always the kind of movie that I never felt compelled to watch when it’s on. Honestly, I was never impressed with the bits I’d seen, but there were always interesting sequences that made the rest of the movie worth it. So, in subsequent years, I would watch bits and pieces because there was sometimes nothing to watch on cable. When I last watched this movie, I rated this movie rather highly back when I was more of a snob when it came to movies. But as anyone who has read my Phantom Thread review, I’ve decided to just to watch movies as their own individual self, judge them as their own thing no matter who’s involved in terms of the directors, the writers, or the actors. Watching this again was interesting. As a movie directed by someone who would be later become one of the most idiosyncratic and quirky filmmakers of our time, younger middle school me who watched this on cable was right. Outside of a few well directed sequences, it’s fine.

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Review – Phantom Thread (2017)

by Armando Vanegas

The 90’s independent film boom was quite a ride as there were so many unique voices that would be hard to replicate. Not only that, a lot of these filmmakers and their works just carried so much swagger to them that you had to impressed by how confident they came across. Many of them seemed to stay with made them work, but Paul Thomas Anderson seems to always want to challenge himself in a way that sets him apart from the pack as he seems to have a tendency to get out of his comfort zone. While I wasn’t crazy about his last movie Inherent Vice, it was still one of those movies that you had to admire for its weirdness even if it doesn’t totally come together. This was in some ways a return to form for him in some ways even if this isn’t a movie I can say that I totally could embrace. When I first saw this in the theater earlier this year, I remember being really impressed by how well made it was, but that’s to be expected from Anderson. This is still apparent on a second viewing. It’s also different and unpredictable in some ways so it had that going for it in addition to excellent performances from Daniel-Day Lewis and Vicky Krieps.

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The Best and Worst Movies of 2017

by Kevin Muller

The Worst Films of 2017

10. Suburbicon

George Clooney took a shot at directing a film that was scripted by the Coen Brothers.  Unfortunately, the groundwork laid by the brothers wasn’t strong enough for Clooney to make a good film. It is spectacular failure. The first half of the film leads us through an interesting story that drops the ball in the second half. Clooney decided to combine an unproduced script, a crime film, and the true story of a black family living in a white suburb, into one movie. The problem is that both scripts have totally different tones and themes that could’ve worked if they had their own movie, but by mashing them together, it created a narrative mess that you can’t pinpoint where it starts and ends.

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Review – Phantom Thread (2017)

by Kevin Muller

“…When I was a boy, I used to hide things in the linings of the garments.  Things I only knew that were there…..secrets.”

Reynolds Woodcock utters that line to his lover Alma. It is a simple one that both describes his secretive way of life and the tone of this film. Many people have dismissed this thing for its appeared smugness and esoteric nature. Oh, it is also a story about a dressmaker in the 1950’s too! Who wants to watch that? Those qualities are just what is on the surface of Paul Thomas Anderson’s incredible new film that reunites him with his There Will Be Blood actor, Daniel Day-Lewis, who has said this will be his curtain call from the cinematic world. For film lovers, that is enough reason to both get our asses in the seats, and sit through a movie about a dressmaker.

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