Grandma - Review

    As the world enters the fall movie season, more and more Oscar worthy performances will work their way to the top.  Grandma is no exception as Lily Tomlin is a revelation in a film that belongs completely to her. If her performance is any indication of what’s to come from the upcoming, yet unofficial, awards season, audiences everywhere are in for a treat.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials - Review

   Yet another book-turned-movie franchise recently released its follow up to a solid first entry in the series. While the first film, simply titled The Maze Runner, was not a spectacle of any sort, it at least executed an interesting idea to a certain degree. The sequel, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, drifted into a clichéd post-apocalyptic film that was too focused on setting up a sequel rather than telling a self-contained story.

Everest - Review

   There have been a lot of visual spectacle films to come out over the years, movies that simply must be experienced in IMAX. Everest adds to this ever-expanding list in tremendous fashion. In a film with so many big name actors, it’s truly amazing that none of them are the star. Instead the mountain itself is the star of the film, the focal point for which the story to take place, the dramatic center and ultimately the most interesting part of Everest is Everest itself.

Black Mass - Review

   Johnny Depp, one of the most well known actors of the modern age, has been on, what seems continuous, a cycle of putting on a bunch of makeup and acting strange and wacky. While not all of them are awful, most of them have been (I’m looking at you Mortdecai). Nevertheless, many were looking for the return of the actor everyone knows Johnny Depp can be. Though he does wear quite a bit of makeup in Black Mass, Depp ditches the shtick and delivers a creepy and shiver-inducing performance.

The Visit - Review

   It’s no secret that M. Night Shyamalan’s career has gone a little off the rails. After three successful outings to begin his directing career, Shyamalan went on to direct such masterpieces as The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth. But there is no denying that the talent was there at the start. The Visit shows signs of life and a possible return to form for the director, trading the high budgets in for a smaller horror film might just have been what he needed.

The Transporter Refueled - Review

   When a film opens with a car commercial for it’s opening title, you know you’re off to a bad start. And while this may be a slight exaggeration, The Transporter Refueled, a reboot of the Jason Statham-led franchise, opens with a rounding shot of an Audi that seems to last way to long to just be an establishing shot.  This is a nitpick of course, but in reality it set the tone for what was going to follow for the remainder of the runtime.

The End of the Tour - Review

   Often celebrities today present a false image, a personality set in place specifically for the camera.  This allows one to pick and choose their mood for that day whether it’s a good or bad day depends on them. The End of the Tour is about the exact opposite of this celebrity mindset. Studying the short but meaningful relationship between a newly acclaimed writer and the Rolling Stone reporter who was lucky enough to interview him.