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.
Category Archives: Year of Release
The Sisters Brothers (2018)
My first impression of the trailer of Jacques Audiard’s (Dheepan) The Sisters Brothers was that it too quickly and too easily reminded me of a Quentin Tarantino movie. The trailer teetered the line of whether it was a drama or a comedy, a comedy masquerading itself as a drama, a drama trying to go for so much dark humor, or a variety of other techniques made famous by one of our generation’s most recognized and revered directors. But, honestly, to compare Audiard’s film to one of Tarantino’s would be doing a disservice to Audiard because this movie is better than anything Tarantino has directed since Pulp Fiction, except for 2009’s Inglourious Basterds. This Tarantino was one that I liked, but one, like each of his movies, had more than a few scenes that were difficult to watch.
Triple Frontier (2019)
One of the early tragedies of the Netflix distribution line must be the 
J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year, All Is Lost) Triple Frontier, a movie you can decide after watching or reading this review whether you like it or not. This is not a review that will talk about the merits and faults of Netflix (by one sentence, the 2019 stand is that Netflix is unique with its shows, but I wish it would stay away from movies). Still, Triple Frontier deserved its viewing on a big screen theater, where it could have flourished. I’ve seen over 1500 movies in a movie theatre at the time of this post. I’ve seen 1500 other movies for the first time on my television screen as well. For each movie I’ve seen and loved on my television, I can’t help but wonder what the movie must have been like in the atmosphere in which it was designed to be viewed. I can’t make the same claim the other way around. Sure, I’ve said, “Man, I wish I would have saved my cash and watched this at home…or not watched this at all” when I see a terrible movie in the theatre, but that is a different conversation and, hopefully, one I don’t have to have on a different day.
Arctic (2018)
Joe Penna’s directorial debut, Arctic, was a movie I highly anticipated, one that I didn’t love as much as I thought I would during its viewing, but one that stuck around with me well after it was over and one that’s worth a review. I wish this movie was a true story. It would have made the movie more meaningful. But, at the same time, Penna could have easily said that this was inspired by actual events because, of course, it was. There are survival stories like the one in Arctic across this beautiful planet every single day, whether it be in the frozen terrain in the middle of the Arctic nowhere, or on a mountain, in the middle of a forest, a desert, an ocean, or any other location where it would be deemed unsurvivable for the average person in the short-term and anyone in the long-term. So while the story of Overgård (Mads Mikkelsen – The Promised Land, The Hunt) is not his own, I don’t think the move is lessened because of what we know do know about stories where a person or a group of people are stranded in the middle of nowhere and either survive or don’t survive.
Wildlife (2018)
There is something very subdued from Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife that makes it a more meaningful movie than it probably is. I don’t know if there is a particular term for it other than it felt very Paul Dano-like. The man who never appears to age has delivered in a ton of movies you probably have never seen or left the theater scratching your head over (There Will Be Blood, Love & Mercy, Swiss Army Man, Little Miss Sunshine, Meek’s Cutoff, The Ballad of Jack and Rose). He plays some odd characters, so why wouldn’t his directing style be similar? Interestingly, the cast in his leads one of the most underrated and diverse actors of our generation in Jake Gyllenhaal (End of Watch, Prisoners), who is never afraid to take a risk in a role and is one of the most talented and underappreciated actresses of the same generation in Carey Mulligan (Shame, An Education) who prefers some of the safer roles.