Why did the Mad Titan Thanos (Josh Brolin – W., Sicario) need to grab hold of the power of the six Infinity Stones to destroy the universe? I think it’s important to understand what causes a villain to do certain actions rather than just to have a bad guy. The stronger the villain’s arc and the more we sympathize with them on any level, the more we understand and appreciate the underlying of who they are. In Avengers: Infinity War (directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo), we have a powerful bad guy motivated by a tortured past and willing to destroy all the good guys in the universe to atone for it. After the planet Titan is no longer inhabited, he is not allowed to prevent things from destroying it; he thinks he will prevent it. Instead, he lost his planet and everyone on it. Vowing not to let something like that happen again, he makes it his mission to balance the universe by completely wiping out half of it. But to do so, he’ll need all six of the Infinity Stones that will power his Infinity Gauntlet, allowing him to bend time, space, energy, and the laws of physics and reality.
Category Archives: Suspense
Revenge (2017)
Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge (a terrible title since it has the same name as the Kevin Costner 1990 movie, a 2002 Roman Polanski film, a 1971 Shelley Winters film, and more) might be the best movie of 2018 you have yet to hear about. However, I can’t think of a better one for a movie that makes no bones about it, a movie about revenge, and nothing more. Driven by a first-time director in Fargeat, a cast that has no one that you’ve ever heard of, and a marketing campaign that likely consisted only of trailers on just as unknown straight-to-DVD releases, Revenge earned less than $125,000 at the box office and its limited May 2018 release, the movie resonated with the critics (92% with 119 reviews) though, with more than 2400 ratings, just over half (55%) gave the movie a favorable review. Much more than a simple popcorn flick, Fargeat creates a highly likable protagonist in Jen (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz – Somewhere Beautiful, Rings) and three highly unlikeable antagonists, whom I’ll discuss in subsequent paragraphs. You’ll find yourself cheering hard for Jen and hoping, even if you are against violence, that those who have wronged her get what they deserve.
Homefront (2013)
Homefront is not a movie I would typically watch (let alone review), but it has been in my Netflix queue for quite some time. I usually watch some of my more mindless movies in February and March. Before I even begin reviewing, that’s not to say that this was a poorly made movie or one that you shouldn’t watch. It just means that this is a movie you watch purely for entertainment purposes, and its storyline does not require a lot of thought or concentration. Also, I have over 400 movies reviewed at this time, yet I still have not reviewed a Jason Statham (The Mechanic, The Transformer) movie. That has mostly to do with the fact that I don’t watch a lot of Statham movies. I like him as an action star, but my movie watching these days tends to take me away from The Mechanic, The Transformer, The Expendables, and The Fast and the Furious franchises. Although, based on their box office numbers, there is an audience for Statham-type movies. But, now in my early 40s, I find myself drawn more to movies as an art form rather than I do for pure entertainment purposes. And I almost laugh at this, considering the movies I watched 15 years ago compared to today’s movies.
Searching (2018)
While by no means a perfect movie, what an ambitious and stunning debut for first-time director Aneesh Chaganty. At the ripe age of just 27 years, he took a movie that many people (including the cast) thought was an impossible task while others thought would come across as a complete trainwreck and made this one of the absolute must-sees in 2018. Searching is so entuned with today’s technology, especially relating to social media, webcams, the dangers of communicating online with strangers, and the idea that an online persona can be so different than who a person is in real life. Chaganty considered that technology, including social media platforms, constantly evolves. He knew he only had a while to write, cast, film, edit, market, and release this movie that felt relevant and current.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Though it is not one of the ten BEST movies of 2018 (it is just on the outside looking in), there is a place for a movie like John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place because of its originality, creepiness, and ability to keep you on the edge of your seat for its fast-flying 90 minutes. In a time when Hollywood struggles with original storylines, we find a first-time director and still novice movie star in Krasinski (NBC’s The Office, Promised Land) delivering a downright knockout punch in his debut effort. I love gritty movies. I love movies that are rich in their characters. I love movies where the tone doesn’t change from opening credits to ending credits. A Quiet Place had all of this and more, and thus, it has found a spot in my Top Ten Movies of the Year for 2018 over other movies that might have been less flawed but were also far less original.