Movie Reviews

Love, Simon

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  • Title: Love, Simon
  • IMDb: link

Love, Simon movie reviewI’m a sucker for a good coming of age story. In many ways Love, Simon is fairly by the book. We’re given a likable high school student dealing with school, friends, and his first crush. The difference from most of these types of mainstream films, is that Simon (Nick Robinson) is gay. What makes the film work is that while Simon frets about what others will think of him if they learn the truth, his gayness doesn’t solely define him as a character.

Simon’s friends include longtime platonic pal Leah (Katherine Langford), jock Nick (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), and newcomer Abby (Alexandra Shipp). He’s also got a loving father (Tad Hamilton), mother (Jennifer Garner), and younger sister (Talitha Bateman). Discovering another closeted gay student at his high school, Simon begins trading emails with “Blue.” As the relationship deepens, Simon imagines various people standing in for the mysterious stranger. Complicating matters are a annoying classmate (Logan Miller) who discovers Simon’s secret and uses it to blackmail Simon into helping him score with one of Simon’s friends. While the weakest aspect of the film, it still contains some genuine moments.

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Annihilation

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  • Title: Annihilation
  • IMDb: link

Annihilation movie reviewI love Ex Machina (enough to name it my favorite film of 2015), but holy hell is director Alex Garland‘s follow-up project a clusterfuck. Based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer, Annihilation focuses on a biologist and former soldier (Natalie Portman) who chooses to journey into a rainbow-curtain rift (referred to as a shimmer) with four other female scientists (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, and Tessa Thompson) in hopes of understanding what is happening inside and what the anomaly did to her husband (Oscar Isaac) who was the only soldier sent from any of the previous expeditions to make it out alive.

Although hardly original, the film starts out with an interesting enough premise. Some of this is fulfilled within the group’s early moments inside the altered reality, although the existence and nature of it also creates several of the film’s biggest plot problems. Existing and expanding for three years, viewable by satellite, radar, and the human eye, and having swallowed up whole towns that had to be evacuated, we are led to believe the somehow the military has kept the existence of this anomaly secret from the world the entire time? Seriously?

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Black Panther

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  • Title: Black Panther
  • IMDb: link

Black Panther movie reviewWhile ultimately falling into the category of a lesser Marvel film, there’s still quite a bit to enjoy about Black Panther which develops the African country of Wakanda (which is far more advanced than almost anyone in the outside world suspects). Black Panther seems a bit out of place as Marvel gears up for its big crossover cosmic event in Infinity War as it is arguably the least connected film to the larger overall franchise since the first movies premiered a decade ago.

Taking place after the events of Captain America: Civil War, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) returns home to assume his new role as king. Along with the beautiful scenery and high-tech gadgets, Wakanda also introduces us to some interesting supporting characters including T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) who acts as a Bond-like Q, Lupita Nyong’o as a female spy and potential love interest for the new king, Danai Gurira as the head of the army, and Angela Bassett and Forest Whitaker as the elder generation ushering in the new king. Martin Freeman also reprises his role from Civil War in one of the movie’s few ties to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Hostiles

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  • Title: Hostiles
  • IMDb: link

Hostiles movie reviewHostiles is a wagon train movie, without the wagon train. Christian Bale stars as Capt. Joseph J. Blocker, a career solider who has spent the better part of two decades fighting Native Americans in the late 19th Century. A reluctant Blocker is ordered to escort an old enemy (Wes Studi) and his family (Adam Beach, Xavier Horsechief, Q’orianka Kilcher, and Tanaya Beatty) from New Mexico to Montana and deliver them safely home after years of being prisoners of the Union Army. Along the way, the group will pick-up a woman (Rosamund Pike) whose family was brutally killed in the film’s opening scene and a prisoner (Ben Foster) with a connection to Blocker’s past.

After the initial attack on the Quaid farm, Hostiles falls back into a slow burn of a film as former enemies and strangers will have to rely on each other to make the dangerous trek across country. Writer/director Scott Cooper‘s adapted screenplay doesn’t reinvent the wheel and relies mostly on strong performances to carry a rather straightforward plot that never quite succeeds in presenting Blocker and his prisoners as equals due to the vastly superior amount of time the camera spends on the former compared to the later.

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I, Tonya

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  • Title: I, Tonya
  • IMDb: link

I, Tonya movie reviewI, Tonya is a compelling, if flawed, look at the life and career of Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) memorable mostly for the terrific performances of Robbie and co-star Allison Janney (as Tonya’s mother). Framed as flashbacks told through a series of current interviews (which were actually shot as reference for the script) we watch a young Tonya struggle with acceptance in ice skating despite her obvious talent, her troubled relationships with her mother and husband (Sebastian Stan), and the events leading up to the attack on rival Nancy Kerrigan (Caitlin Carver).

While a bit too apologetic of Harding in an attempt to allow audiences to see her as the victim of circumstance she believes herself to be, writer Steven Rogers embraces the trashy tabloid nature of the the entire sordid affair going so far as to include Bobby Cannavale as a Hard Copy producer. Director Craig Gillespie‘s film isn’t without its missteps including Robbie taking over the role of Tonya at 13 (seriously, was I the only one thinking of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story at this point?) and some awkward CGI that doesn’t always properly fit Robbie’s face to her stunt double on the ice.

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