You’ll probably cry, but should you? Director David Ayer (End of Watch, Harsh Times) reunites with Brad Pitt (F1: The Movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) for the first time since 2014’s Fury. At the time, Fury was Ayer’s most successful movie, earning $85 million at the box office domestically while receiving positive critic (75%) and audience (84%) scores on Rotten Tomatoes. Since then, Ayer’s directed films have mostly been hit or miss, except for 2024’s The Beekeeper. Known for edgier, in-your-face action movies, Heart of the Beast shows he can deliver a more personal, poignant story without an array of characters.
Category Archives: J.K. Simmons
For Love Of The Game (1999)
I first watched Sam Raimi’s (Spider-Man 2, A Simple Plan) For Love of the Game in the fall of 1999. It was the day after Virginia Tech defeated Clemson at Lane Stadium on ESPN’s Thursday Night Football. My dad had come down for the game. The day after, we went to see the Kevin Costner-led (A Perfect World, Field of Dreams) baseball drama. I’m a sucker for films that seamlessly incorporate flashbacks to advance the story better. For Love of the Game did just that, perhaps, at the time, in a way that I hadn’t seen before. 23-year-old me left my viewing thinking that it was one of the top 10-15 movies I’ve ever seen.
Being the Ricardos (2021)
Meh. There are many better movies to see this year than Aaron Sorkin’s (The Trial of the Chicago 7, Molly’s Game) Being the Ricardos. However, the 2021 Academy Award nominees seem more prominent in terms of name recognition than in prior years. Movies that in previous years likely wouldn’t have sniffed a nomination are likely to get multiples this year. Being the Ricardos, with Sorkin and Academy favorites, four-time Oscar nominee Nicole Kidman (The Hours, Lion) and three-time nominee Javier Bardem (Biutiful, No Country for Old Men) will receive recognition. Kidman will get a nomination for acting (though she has no chance of winning), but Bardem will not. The film could receive a best-picture nomination, which would make me cringe.
Palm Springs (2020)
Palm Springs, starring Andy Samberg (NBC’s Brooklyn 99, Saturday Night Live) and Cristin Milioti (The Wolf of Wall Street, It Had to Be You), was exactly the comedy movie we needed during the summer of 2020. In a year with very few comedies (Borat Subsequent Movie will likely be the most memorable), this was a fun, unique movie that I’m sure would have broken up a dreadful summer. The problem was that theaters were mostly closed when this movie was released.
The Front Runner (2018)
An upstart politician is seen with a woman who is not his wife. A scandal ensues. Would-be presidential candidate resigns amidst the controversy. Just because a story happens doesn’t mean you must make a movie about it. At best, Jason Reitman’s (Up in the Air, Young Adult) Gary Hart biopic should have been a straight-to-cable drop. But really, a 60-minute documentary on The History Channel or something would have sufficed. That’s not to say The Front Runner was a bad movie. Because it wasn’t, but it wasn’t a movie we needed. Reitman, a fantastic yet underrated director fresh off the incredibly impressive Tully with also such films as Juno and Thank You For Smoking among his credits, had no business involving himself with a movie that, no matter what he did, wasn’t going to register with the critics or with the audiences because:
- Even though it is a 30-year story at the time of its release, it is one everyone knows.
- It’s a story that we, as a society, tried to make into some huge deal, whereas 30 years later, we realize that a politician cheating on his wife is something that hardly bats an eye.
- It’s a story that raises some issues related to morality and tries to be a little preachy in a day and age when none of us are interested in hearing and seeing preachy, especially from a story that is trying to be relevant in today’s society but does feel 30 years old.