Two movies that want to be serious but really aren’t… Boys of Abu Ghraib…By far the more successful of the two but that isn’t saying much. It follows a soldier who becomes a new guard at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, and the movie does an admirable job of showing both sides of how that prison became…
Category: Mindless Mondays
Performers Review Day: “Leave the World Behind” and “La Bare”
Two documentaries about people who make their living up on a stage, and neither of them really worth watching… La Bare…This documentary about male strippers was directed by Magic Mike co-star (and True Blood alum) Joe Manganiello. The problem is that it feels less real than Magic Mike and Manganiello doesn’t push the people he interviews enough….
Move Review: The Hunger Games, Mockingjay Part 1
In a way, I think this film is better than the first two, but in another way I enjoyed it less. What Works: In theory, I love that a huge blockbuster film (essentially aimed at kids and teenagers) has the cojones to be about a propaganda war. It has real ideas percolating beneath the surface…
U.K. Anti-Hero Review Day: “Gambit” and “Filth”
Two very different movies about anti-heroes from the U.K. but sadly I can’t recommend either one of them… Filth…James McAvoy stars as a psychotic Scottish detective trying to solve a hate crime so he can get a promotion. But he spends more time trying to unravel or defeat his rival detectives for the promotion, and…
TV Review: “Sons of Anarchy” Final Episode
It was a long, drawn-out final season that definitely suffered from some serious padding. [Each episode was usually 90 minutes, and sometimes longer than that.] Since the entire season’s plot was mostly about revenge for the events of season 6, and not many new characters/storylines were introduced it felt like stalling until we finally got…
TV Review: “Gracepoint” Series Finale
All’s not-so-well that ends not-so-well on this mediocre Fox drama. True, I haven’t seen the BBC’s version (called “Broadchurch”) but others have said that this American version is sometimes a scene-for-scene remake, and has been a pretty faithful adaptation, and it makes me wonder why that show became such a phenomenon. Anyway, the show wasn’t…
TV Reviews: “Eaten Alive” and Rogen/Franco “Naked and Afraid”
Two stunts, but only one of them was intentionally fake… “Eaten Alive”…Everyone else has already ripped this special to shreds…and they were right. It was two hours long with about ten minutes of real action. The first hour was total padding, and it was only at the very end of the second hour that we…
Independent Spirit Awards Review Day: “Test,” “Blue Ruin,” “It Felt Like Love,” and “The Retrieval”
So the first three films were all nominated for the Independent Spirit Awards this year (and all in the same category that honors ultra-indies that were made for 500,000 or less), but the fourth film should have been as well. Even though it wasn’t technically nominated, it sure captures the independent spirit. Test…It’s about a gay male…
Movie Reviews: “Big Hero 6” Vs. “Penguins of Madagascar”
Two animated films currently in theaters; two (tonally) different options battling for dollars…But what if they’re both good options? Big Hero 6…This is a much more serious movie than “Penguins,” and my gut feeling is that adults might like it more while children might like “Penguins” more. I liked the film’s focus on science and…
Movie Review: “The Homesman,” Another Film with Cop-Out Ideology
This movie sucks too. Sure, it’s not as brazenly offensive (to me and my sensibilities) as “Above the Lights” but it is a film that starts off with the novel idea of doing a feminist Western and then betrays that premise completely by the time the credits roll. What Works: It starts out as a…
Movie Review: “Beyond the Lights” the Most Dishonest Movie This Year
If a film is really good, it holds my attention completely as I’m watching it. If it’s not, I start mentally writing the review before the end credits. Firmly in the latter category is “Beyond the Lights” (the black pop star saved by a black bodyguard/cop movie that’s getting rave reviews and white critics saying…
Movie Review: Dumb and Dumber To
I didn’t expect this film to be as good as the first or even a very good movie, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this outright bad either… What Works: Did you like the trailer? Because all the funniest parts are in the trailer. I’d say about 90 percent of the jokes that actually…
Movie Review: Fury
Better late than never…even though it came out in the middle of October, this “Brad Pitt WWII tank movie” is still kicking around in some theaters so it’s worth a review. What Works: I wasn’t big on the movie as a whole, but there were some knockout standalone sequences like a climactic tank battle and…