All posts by bryanbuser

The Hours (2002)

Oh, man, what a fantastic movie is. This was my second viewing of The Hours. I first watched it in 2010 and remember being extremely surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I would not have given this movie a chance back when it came out in 2002, but my interest in films has changed dramatically since then. Now, that’s not to say I still can’t enjoy a blockbuster (I watched Captain America: Civil War earlier in the same day and loved it). Still, I am much more into the human aspect of independent dramas like The Hours than I am about action movies or comedies. This movie deals with depression, a topic that I am, unfortunately, very familiar with. It does it from three different periods with three stories that are sometimes loose (and not so loosely) during others. This movie knotted Nicole Kidman (Cold Mountain, Rabbit Hole) with, surprisingly, just her third nomination to date (as of May 2016) and her first and only win. With a prosthetic nose, she was virtually unrecognizable as Virginia Woolf. But it wasn’t her physical characteristics that stood out. It was how she immersed herself in the role of a woman who you would think had it all but was so mentally troubled that she could not find any happiness in her life. An accomplished actress, this is the performance of her career in a movie that shouldn’t be missed by anybody who views life with a cup-half-empty sort of mentality.

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A Walk in the Woods (2015)

A Walk in the Woods, the 2015 comedy-drama that I thought would be a throwaway movie I originally only watched so that I could add it to my list, turned out to be one of the year’s biggest surprises. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’d be a fool to think that a year from now, I’d remember anything from this movie or that I’ll ever watch this movie again. But for two hours on a Tuesday night in the middle of April, it was a refreshing escape from reality, and the movie had me grinning from ear to ear from the first scene until the last. Also, if Robert Redford (The Horse Whisperer, All is Lost) or Nick Nolte (The Prince of Tides, Warrior) called it a career today, and this was either of their last movies, that would be okay.
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Eye in the Sky (2016)

Eye in the Sky was a movie I knew nothing about before I viewed it. Based on the promotional poster, I thought this would be a science fiction movie. It was by no means a science fiction movie. The best way to describe it is a war on terror movie that focuses on how mission objectives and moral decisions are sometimes. Regarding movie comparisons, I would say it is American Sniper meets Lone Survivor meets Platoon meets Lions for Lambs meets 2015’s little-known Good Kill (as a quick aside, I would suggest seeing this movie before seeing Eye in the Sky. You’ll learn more about drone missions. Eye in the Sky expects you to know a little about these without explaining them). That is certainly a lot to compare. Ironically, American Sniper and Lone Survivor were my favorite movies of the year (2014 and 2013, respectively), while Platoon was my third favorite movie of 1986. I mention this because I was not the biggest fan of Eye in the Sky. I know the movie has done well with the critics (92% on Rotten Tomatoes), but it was a little loose and not drawn to the story as well as I could have. This and the combination of a clunky beginning while also being a movie shot mostly in real-time, and you have a movie that felt like it failed in more avenues than it succeeded in. With that said, this wasn’t a bad movie, and it got much better the further you got into it.

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Midnight Special (2016)

Midnight Special. First, the good. The tone was incredible. It was seductive. It was menacing. It was creepy. It was engaging. It kept you on the edge of your seat. Finally, it had the right director. Jeff Nichols (Mud, Shotgun Stories) is still pretty new to the game. This is just his fourth directorial effort, and, once again, Nichols teams up with Michael Shannon as his leading man (99 HomesRevolutionary Road) for the first time since the incredible Take Shelter, a movie that was nothing short of a thing of genius. In addition to the amazing Take ShelterMudand Shotgun Stories were both fantastic movies. Midnight Special was supposed to be the next great chapter in the Nichols/Shannon book of greatness. Unfortunately, this was the furthest thing from the truth.

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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 that receives this kind of publicity all year. 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 between November 2015 and March 2016, you likely saw a preview of this film. The preview does a great job of not letting us know who the good and bad guys are. 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’s even more interesting that these two rival companies are releasing these movies so close. You could argue that Marvel could have waited until Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice was released and then learned from any mistakes made while capitalizing on what the Warner Brothers movie did well. However, we have delayed production and would have probably pushed this movie to a release date at the beginning of 2018 as soon as possible.

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