Not being the biggest Woody Allen (Annie Hall, Match Point) fan, I’ve always felt that his romance and dramas needed more substance than he offered. Cassandra’s Dream is a movie I would never have given a chance when it was released back in 2007. Likewise, Colin Farrell (The Lobster, In Bruges) and Ewan McGregor (The Impossible, Incendiary) are not my biggest fans. Ferrell has grown on me by shedding his bad boy, box office revenue-chasing persona and doing more indies. I am surprised I even watched it. I’m grateful I gave it a chance after it was released. It was a nice, simple film that entertained me the whole time.
Category Archives: Suspense
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 it fell short. An A- for sure. Maybe even an A. But it won’t be the 49th movie I’ve seen that 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 may have been the odd man out 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, honestly, while his performance was excellent, 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 overlooked entirely 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.
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 extraterrestrial beings in some form. And then you have films like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, Contact, Solaris, District 9, Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian, which are also movies about either extraterrestrial encounters or innovative space exploration that deal more with human component or relationship building than they do action, adventure, and 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 enjoyed this movie.
The Shallows (2016)
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.
Triple 9 (2016)
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.