Tag Archives: movie review

Movie Review: Resident Evil 6 – The Final Chapter (2017) “It’s Over! Wait, What?”

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, Milla Jovovich, Ali Larter
Well, after six movies and 15 years, the Resident Evil movie saga is finally ov….wait, they announced a week after the last movie hit Blu Ray that they’re rebooting the whole franchise?  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!  So….yes, Sony has already announced that Resident Evil is being rebooted and James Wan is talks to oversee.  Why would this happen when this movie (which I promise we’ll actually get around to discussing soon) bombed spectacularly in the United States?  Well, that would be entirely because the movie made a sarcastically absurd amount of money in China, bringing the overall gross of the franchise to $1.2 billion and Sony doesn’t do original ideas, so in a few years, we’ll have The Umbrella Corporation, the T-Virus, zombies, and people shooting zombies back in theaters.  But since I am a completionist and made myself finish out the series with the “final” chapter.  How did things go?  We’re still waiting for that first great video game movie.  But on the upside, you still have a few days left to find another way to celebrate National Zombie Awareness Month (yes, I’m serious). Continue reading Movie Review: Resident Evil 6 – The Final Chapter (2017) “It’s Over! Wait, What?”

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (2017) *The Weirdest, Coolest Family Dramedy Ever*

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Guardians of the Galaxy was the biggest surprise of the first two phases of the MCU, so it’s shouldn’t be a huge surprise that James Gunn took your expectations for where the stacefaring group may go next and stood them on their head.  For all the amazing special F/X, Guardians 2 is a much smaller, character-driven movie than the first one was.  It is undoubtedly Star Lord’s (Chrs Pratt) film, closing questions on his origin in the first film that will give birth to conflicts sure to pop up for the survivors of Infinity War.  In the end, though, this film is about family.  Not the families we’re born into, but the families we cobble together out of the people who share our mutual life damage and how they can be as strong and weird and wonderful as any biological bond.  It’s a funny (probably funnier overall than the first film), screwball sci-fi family dramedy that makes issue #15 of the MCU as fresh as the first.

Continue reading Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (2017) *The Weirdest, Coolest Family Dramedy Ever*

Movie Review: Get Out (2017) “An Instant Classic That Defies Categorization”

Daniel Kaluuya

I know this comes a bit late (I’m trying to catch up on my reviewing), but if you haven’t already gotten out to see Get Out, you need to get out to see Get Out posthaste.  That’s largely all I’m going to say about the movie itself.  Now…..get out. Continue reading Movie Review: Get Out (2017) “An Instant Classic That Defies Categorization”

Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast (2017) “Tale Told Nearly As Well As Last Time”

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty and the Beast was the most critically acclaimed animated Disney feature since Snow White, so the live-action turn was going to get incredible scrutiny even before Jon Favreau made a better Jungle Book than either the Disney animated film or the Kipling books.  So whomever followed that was going to have a high bar to clear or even match, and when it was followed by Beauty and the Beast, the early praise and jaw-dropping trailers we’d been seeing for nearly a year have experienced a load of critical backlash in the last month.  It IS a very difficult movie to review and compare to the original, but this is not the 70% film Rotten Tomatoes currently rates it at.  While this live action version of Beauty and the Beast does not reach the perfection of the 1991 film, it is the second fantastic musical we’ve had released for the screen in three months (at some point I may have to stop saying I hate musicals).  While comparisons can’t be avoided, and there are some pitfalls, Beauty and the Beast continues a stream of quality re-imaginings of Disney’s animated works, presenting an absolutely gorgeous, moving, film. Continue reading Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast (2017) “Tale Told Nearly As Well As Last Time”

Movie Review: Split (2017) “Is the Nightfall Over?”

James McAvoy, Split, Anya Taylor Joy

Once upon a time, in 1999, a remarkable, astounding, amazing film called The Sixth Sense came out and blew the collective minds of the world.  The director was a wunderkind named M. Night Shaymalan.  Night followed The Sixth Sense with Unbreakable, which did not get near the critical acclaim and box office The Sixth Sense did, but nothing was going to do that.  His first film turned into a global phenomenon.  Unbreakable is, in many ways, heavily influential to the grounded reality of the tack comic book movies took when that era began around the same time.  Night’s third film, Signs, did a little better than Unbreakable, but isn’t half the film.  Then came the fall.  Horrible film after horrible film after horrible film followed Signs.  Studios would still throw $100 million budgets at him hoping that he could turn it around, but things digressed to the point where his name was such an audience deterrent that it was removed from promotional posters.  I have been reluctant to pay money and go to the theater to see Split.  The film, made for only $9 million, won the box office three weeks in a row, generated great word-of-mouth, so I finally gave in and went and saw my first M. Night Shaymalan film in the theater since The Village (aka THE BEGINNING OF THE FALL).  So is he back?  I think he just might be.  Split is no home run, but it’s only a little below Signs in his canon and, like his best films, the ending was not only a mind-blower, it promises an exciting future. Continue reading Movie Review: Split (2017) “Is the Nightfall Over?”