Category Archives: Genre

2013, Alexandra Rapaport, Drama, International, Lasse Fogelstrøm, Mads Mikkelsen, The Hunt, Thomas Bo Larsen, Thomas Vinterberg

The Hunt (2013)

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Mads Mikkelsen is most notably known as a villain. Whether you recognize him more as the man opposing James Bond in Casino Royale or as Hannibal Lecter on NBC’s hit show Lecter, he’s adept at playing the bad guy. But, in the most poignant performance of his career and one that earned him praise across the globe, Mikkelsen stars as Lucas, a kind and gentle daycare employee falsely accused of molesting one of his students in the Danish film and Academy Award-nominated foreign language film The Hunt.

I struggle with movies that are subtitled. My philosophy often is if I can view a good film in English or one that is in another language that will force me to spend a couple of hours reading while also trying to pay attention to the visuals on the screen, why wouldn’t I pick the movie in my native language? Unless a film (or one of its leads) is nominated for an Academy Award (Amour, Maria Full of Grace), is recommended by a friend (The Lunchbox), or doesn’t have an English substitute (North Face), I’m probably not going to give it a chance. It’s not because those movies will be bad. Like everyone, I have a job and many other hobbies, and time is limited. However, when a foreign language film does break through, and it is well made, it is a film that I will likely remember for a long time, if not for the rest of my life. This was certainly the case with The  Lunchbox, North Face, and The Hunt.

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2016, Blake Lively, Drama, Horror, Jaume Collet-Serra, Suspense, The Shallows

The Shallows (2016)

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Congratulations to all those associated with what will be the biggest surprise moneymaking movie of 2016. Jaume Collet-Serra’s (Non-Stop, Run All Night) The Shallows will have used a highly successful marketing campaign (which included showing its terrifying trailers during sporting events and popular primetime television shows) along with positive scores from the critics (75% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) on its way to making, my guess, more than $300 million worldwide by the time everything is said and done. This will make The Shallows the biggest non-superhero, non-G-rated movie to be released in the first half of 2016. Of course, it’s exactly everything you would expect it to be, and that will be perfectly fine for most of its audience. If you want an escape from reality fare, this could be the movie for you. This could be the movie if you want to take your thinking cap off for an hour and a half. If you want a movie that builds upon every scene in its quest to terrify you, this could be the movie for you. Even if you want a film with beautiful cinematography, this could be the movie for you. But if you are looking for something the slightest bit believable or care about the quality of acting in your lead or sub-characters, The Shallows is not your movie.

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2015, Comedy, Daddy's Home, Hannibal Buress, John Morris, Linda Cardellini, Mark Wahlberg, Sean Anders, Thomas Haden Church, Will Ferrell

Daddy’s Home (2015)

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With apologies to the extremely funny The Campaign, first-time co-director John Morris and Sean Anders’s (Horrible Bosses 2, Sex Drive) Daddy’s Home is, ironically, Will Ferrell’s (Old School, Step Brothers) best-starring comedy role since 2010’s The Other Guys. It’s not a movie I thought I would particularly like and one that I had serious doubts about as much as 20 minutes in (I hadn’t laughed, but maybe one time), but as the movie progressed, it got funnier and funnier. By its conclusion, it became a somewhat memorable movie I wouldn’t put on the “A-shelf” comedy list but might find itself just a notch below. What made the movie work was the dynamics between Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg (Lone Survivor, The Fighter), who didn’t have the same chemistry they had when they teamed partners in the buddy cop, The Other Guys, but were still pretty close. While Daddy’s Home was 100% entirely predictable, it didn’t make it any less fun, and while Ferrell and Wahlberg weren’t exceptionally fantastic in the scenes where they weren’t together, it more than made up for the scenes where they shared screen time.

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2016, Aaron Paul, Action, Anthony Mackie, Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clifton Collins Jr., Crime, Drama, Hidden Gems, John Hillcoat, Kate Winslet, Norman Reedus, Suspense, Triple 9, Woody Harrelson

Triple 9 (2016)

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Suppose you watched season 1 of HBO’s True Detective, and you were as much of a fan of the six-minute single-shot shootout scene that ended episode four (titled Who Goes There) as I was. You might like John Hillcoat’s (The Road, Lawless) underappreciated Triple 9 in that case. Likewise, if you watch Game of Thrones and found the intense battle between the Jon Snow-led wildlings and the white walkers at the end of season five, episode eight (titled Hardhome) as the best single scene in the history of the show, you might just very well like the star-studded Triple 9. If I had trusted my instincts and not those of the critics, I would have been able to appreciate this gem of a popcorn flick on the big screen. Instead, I let the movie pass through the theaters, knowing I would see it eventually at home, but convincing myself that, despite the awesome previous, I would be disappointed by this movie.

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2016, Angourie Rice, Beau Knapp, Comedy, Crime, Drama, Keith David, Kim Basinger, Margaret Qualley, Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Shane Black, Stuart Blumberg, The Nice Guys

The Nice Guys (2016)

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“Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s a saying we’ve all heard before. The grunge band Green Day wrote an iconic song about it in the mid-1990s. I’ll alter the quote slightly by saying that The Nice Guys finishes last. This was not my favorite movie. I knew I would probably feel this way going into the film, but I was willing to sacrifice the two hours because it starred two of my favorite actors, Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine, Drive) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind). Despite its 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I had no faith in this movie. Its style wasn’t my favorite. Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) style for directing this movie was similar to that of Joel and Ethan Coen in that it blended comedy, drama, action, dark comedy, crime (both organized and unorganized), and even small bits of horror to try to come up with a unique idea. Was The Nice Guys a unique idea? No, not really.

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