2020 has been a year with many movies either delayed to later in the year or postponed entirely until 2021. Films considered for Oscar awards for the year are receiving an extension for when they need to be released. That extra time could be extended even longer, depending on events later this year because of the 2020 pandemic. Many movies have skipped theaters and gone straight to OnDemand. One of those movies that will need to worry about Oscar consideration this year is Tate Taylor’s (The Help, The Girl on the Train) Ava.
Category Archives: John Malkovich
Bird Box (2018)
A Quiet Place meets The Mist meets The Happening meets The Road meets I Am Legend (specifically with one of the alternating endings). That’s a quick and easy way to describe the effective Netflix release Bird Box. The A Quiet Place comparison is what many people are going to really compare this film to because of its proximity in release dates. I would have been upset if this was a cheap rip-off of, perhaps, the biggest surprise hit of 2018, replacing not making noise with not being able to see as the change. But Bird Box is based on a 2014 debut novel of the same name by Josh Malerman, years before previews of A Quiet Place were even created. And because of this, it makes the movie even more enjoyable because you get to wonder about Malerman’s inspirations rather than assuming that it was the aforementioned novel that he was trying to emulate.
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Deepwater Horizon (2016)
If you’re going to make a big-budget disaster movie, it might as well be based on a true story. Personally, I’m so over the huge blockbuster disaster movies like The Day After Tomorrow, Poseidon, Independence Day, The Core, Volcano, Into the Storm, Armageddon (which I actually really like), San Andreas (which I also kind of liked), Dante’s Peak…the list goes on and on. The point of these movies, and so many others, is to make a big buck. Forget about the plausibility; most of these movies are utterly ridiculous. The hero(es) always overcome the most extreme circumstances and, often, end up saving the world in the end. Now while the 2010 disaster caused the worst offshore oil spill in United States history and made British Petroleum (BP) the most villainous company on the face of the planet at the time, the story of Deepwater Horizon does take some liberties along the way. While the unfortunate events on that night of April 10th certainly did happen, the events on that rig felt very much like James Cameron’s Titanic after the ship hits the iceberg.
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