Adam McKay’s (The Big Short, Anchorman – The Legend Of Ron Burgundy) Vice almost suffered from a trailer that depicted a movie that looked like a spoof. With The Killers’ hit song Who’s The Man playing in the background and a nearly unrecognizable Christian Bale (Hostiles, American Hustle) almost dancing to the beat in between intermittent lines of him hyping himself up or talking about how he’s going to break all the rules when he becomes Vice President of the United States, McKay’s latest movie plays more like the Will Ferrell/Zach Galifianakis underrated comedy The Campaign that it does a biopic in the realm of Nixon, Lincoln, or Thirteen Days. Its nomination category at this year’s Golden Globe awards was “Comedy.” But while Vice is constantly entertaining and is filmed in a way that, at times, feels like a mockumentary, it is very much a drama, one that you’ll sometimes feel guilty laughing at even during the moments that are meant to be humorous.
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Category Archives: Amy Adams
Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Almost perfect. While it may not even end up in my top five movies of the year, Tom Ford’s (A Single Man) Nocturnal Animals was almost perfect. I liked it so much in this movie, and Ford almost created a masterpiece, but the movie just felt short. An A- for sure. Maybe even an A. But it won’t be the 49th movie that I’ve seen that I would classify as an A+. Jake Gyllenhaal (Love and Other Drugs, Everest) is better than ever, and he could end up with an Oscar nomination for this film. In a perfect world, he would, especially since he very well may have been the odd man out both in 2015 (Nightcrawler) and 2016 (Southpaw) for a Best Actor Academy Award. But with four of the five slots pretty much locked up (Tom Hanks – Sully, Denzel Washington – Fences, Casey Affleck – Manchester by the Sea, Joel Edgerton (Loving), that leaves only one more nomination between Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling (La La Land), Warren Beatty (Rules Don’t Apply), and Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge). And, to be honest, while his performance was great, it wasn’t nearly the performance he gave in either Nightcrawler or Southpaw. Ford’s chances for a Best Directing nod look even dimmer, and an impressive performance by Amy Adams (The Fighter, American Hustle) may be completely overlooked because she will likely receive a nomination (and may even be the frontrunner) for Arrival, a movie that was released just a week before Nocturnal Animals.
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Arrival (2016)
Alien, Fire in the Sky, Independence Day, Men in Black, Starship Troopers, Cloverfield, Signs, Prometheus. These are some of the many movies that have successfully explored contact in some form with extra-terrestrial beings in some form. And then you have movies like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, Contact, Solaris, District 9, Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian that are also movies about either extra-terrestrial encounters or innovative space exploration that deal more with the human component or relationship building than they do action, adventure, and/or a post-apocalyptic future. Add Denis Villeneuve’s (Sicario, Prisoners) Arrival as the latest movie to try to get itself on this impressive list. The critics (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (82%) have both enjoyed this movie. I wouldn’t say that I disliked this movie, but I don’t have the same praise as many others. If you haven’t seen Villeneuve’s Sicario, please see this movie. It was one of the five best movies of 2015. I haven’t met many people who have seen this movie and didn’t like it. It’s an incredible movie. I hoped Villeneuve could recapture that same success with this follow-up, but, ultimately, it was a movie that I found interest in. Still, one that was a little all over the place and not one that I could ultimately relate to or, to an extent, even understand its purpose.
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Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
What do you need to know about Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice that you haven’t already been told? This has easily been the most hyped movie of 2016 so far. In fact, there may not be another movie all year that receives this kind of publicity. And rightfully saw. This film pits arguably the most recognizable superheroes in the world against one another for the first time. If you saw a movie in the theater at any point between, say, November 2015 and March 2016, you likely saw a preview for this film. The preview does such a great job of not really letting us know who is the good guy and the bad guy. When we think we figure it out, we see a trailer portrayed in a completely different light. Marvel is doing the same thing with Iron Man and Captain America for the trailers of Captain America: Civil War (maybe even more effectively than the movie being reviewed today). It is interesting. It is even more interesting that these two rival companies are releasing these movies so close to one another. You could make the argument that Marvel could have waited until Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was released and then learned from any mistakes made while also capitalizing on what the Warner Brothers movie did well. But, as we know, that we have delayed production and would have probably pushed this movie to a release date to the beginning of 2018 at the earliest.
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Big Eyes (2014)
Every once in a while, I’ll see a preview for the first time that I think I will have absolutely no interest in seeing. The movie looks either cheesy, too lame, too weird, etc. But then the film earns a solid rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and I’ll read what a couple of critics who liked the movie have said about it. And then I’ll watch the same trailer again and try to watch it with a different set of eyes. And between my first and second viewing, something convinced me to give the movie a chance. With Tim Burton’s (Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands) Big Eyes, my chief complaint was that the film would be a little too weird for me. However, after a couple of weeks, I convinced myself I would see that movie. I hoped that I could catch this one in the theater (generally speaking, I am far less distracted in a theater than I am at home. But then again, I’m Captain Obvious with this statement). However, Big Eyes grabbed my attention from the get-go and held it through the 1-hour 45-minute viewing.
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