Mr. Brown Versus

I said last December that my blog would make time to comment on things happening outside of movies, and I feel that this warrants it. Before I continue, I was going to make my comments about the heinous murders on the UCLA campus by a lone, disturbed gunman, and his final message he left on You Tube the day before; and the "Yes All Women" movement that took social media by storm after the tragedy. The reason I didn't is because I wasn't confident in my abilities as a writer to talk about subjects on gender equality and misogyny. The story in question, coupled with the lack of empathy have spurred me into writing this piece, along with advice from one of my social media friends, Ryan Adams. By now you all should know the name Jonathan Koppenhaver, aka: "War Machine", but if you don't, here's the short version: the mixed martial artist fighter was being hunted by police for beating his then-girlfriend Christy Mack, at her home in Las Vegas, who was l...

Going into The Giver , I was expecting the worst. For starters, they changed the age of the lead character Jonas, from a naïve 11 year-old boy to a swoon-worthy, naïve 18 year old. The same with his friends - both Asher and Fiona are now teens as well. Next was they way they marketed the film, as a cross between 1984 and Brave New World meets some teen melodrama you'd find on ABC Family. But mostly, I am just nearly burnt out by seeing studios take hot young adult novels and turn them into mediocre ripoffs of better-done adaptations, and given how poor Divergent , The Host , Ender's Game and The Fault In Our Stars turned out, you could understand my hesitation over seeing the final product. Imagine my surprise that the film version of author Lois Lowry's dystopian sci-fi thriller wasn't as terrible as I thought it would be. For starters, the cinematography and color palette by Ross Emery is how I imagined this world would look like. This bland, colorless world feels...

Say, you liked disaster flicks like Twister , The Day After Tomorrow , The Perfect Storm  and 2012 ; and you flocked to watch found footage/POV features like The Blair Witch Project , Cloverfield  and the Paranormal Activity  series, so here you go, America - a natural disaster flick with shaky camera work! It's a sure-fire hit; just step back and watch the money roll in! Maybe I'm being too harsh. I'm sure this wasn't how first time screenwriter John Swetnam and producer Todd Garner pitched the film when the script was given the green light to start production. But I really do wonder if the people inside of the pitch meeting at Warner Brothers had a moment of pause and thought, 'Isn't this just a remake of "Twister" but with found footage slapped on?'  Then again, this is the same town that thought Movie 43  and Catwoman  had decent scripts to go into production, so I guess this shouldn't surprise me in the slightest. Please don't ha...

I love summer movies just as much as the next person. Hell, this season's crop of popcorn escapism are actually better and more satisfying than last year's disappointing slate of blockbusters. But there's only so many big-budget, effects-driven extravaganzas I can watch before I burn myself out. In that instance, a break from blockbuster fare is sorely needed, and i'm reviewing two movies that help cleanse the pallet, and one that...doesn't . Yep, you can even find bad movies at an art-house theater. But that's beside the point. These movies, regardless of your opinions coming out, are good to experience because these are filmmakers who aren't beholden to the studio's bottom line of making a profit. They're doing smaller work, but nonetheless engaging. Most of the time. Belle - Remember the name Gugu Mbatha-Raw. She's the best thing in an English drama that has so much right going for it. First, it's superbly directed by Amma Asante, wh...

"Will you follow me, one last time?" That's the question Thorin Oakenshield poses to his company at the end of the trailer to Peter Jackson's finale to his Hobbit  trilogy, dubbed The Battle of the Five Armies (due out December 17th). Although the question is posed to his accompaniment after everything they've undergone, via the evens of An Unexpected Journey  in 2012, and last years The Desolation of Smaug , I can't help but feel said Q has two meanings to it. The second almost feels like the New Zealand-bred director is asking us, the audience, if we will stick with him, at the end of his prequel trilogy, and the end of this Middle Earth saga. It's a fair question to ask. Both installments - An Unexpected Journey  and Desolation  haven't received the same critical acclaim as The Lord of the Rings trilogy did during its 2001-03 run, as the first two have received a 64% and 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes for both parts I and II respectively....

Holy crap, Lars von Trier added another volume to  Nymphomaniac ! Yes! - Charlotte Gainsborough is back as Joe, the unrepentant nymphomaniac who's appetite for sex returns...with a vengeance! I can't wait to see how von Trier outdoes himself with pretentious and artful mundane things like fly fishing and the Fibernache sequence will be used as a metaphor for Joe and her numerous partners... Oh wait, it's just the anticipated first look at the erotic drama Fifty Shades of Grey (due out in theaters February 13, 2015). Nevermind. First off, I have never read the original source material by E.L. James. The premise - a young girl and a mysterious entrepreneur falling in love, but quickly realizing his past is much darker than previously imagined, including a thing for bondage and dom-submissive fetishes - feels something ripped from a cheesy erotic romantic novel that didn't sell with readers until present day. That, and I have a little something called Cinemax Afte...

I've seen bad movies. I've seen dull movies. I've seen incoherent movies. I've seen movies that felt like pure torture to sit through because they're so damn boring to sit through. I haven't encountered anything like Transformers: Age of Extinction . Confession: once I read the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I knew what I was in for, so really, I have only myself to blame for putting myself through sheer hell. When they said that Michael Bay, maestro of destruction, had managed to top Revenge of the Fallen  as the worst installment of the series, I didn't believe it. How could he top that clunky, incoherent mess of a movie?  In just 2 hours and 45 minutes (yes, it's that bloody long), I found my answer. In ways I never could have imagined. It's been five years since the events of the last movie, where Optimus Prime (voiced one again by Peter Cullen) and his band of Autobots stopped the Decipticons from terraforming our world ...