Category: Cinema Dispatch

Cinema Dispatch: The Hateful Eight

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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The Hateful Eight and all the images you see in this review are owned by The Weinstein Company

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Like the rising of the tides, the phases of the moon, and the DiCaprio Oscar denial, Tarantino comes back once again to give us a well written update of one his favorite films as a kid.  Now Django Unchained was a REALLY good movie, but it was weighed down by some less than stellar decisions throughout like the excessive use of… that one word, and how little Django got to do in his own movie before the third act.  Oh, and let’s not forget the baffling inclusion of horse tricks at the end and the terrible acting chops of Quintin himself.  Still, this movie seems to be much smaller in scope and looks to be much more focused on being an ensemble piece than any one person’s movie which gives Tarantino plenty of opportunities to fill his scenes with his trademark dialogue (and fill these bodies with his trademark amounts of excess blood and gore).  Is this going to be a step up for the iconic director, or is this the sign of a trend towards being an ALMOST amazing director instead of an amazing one?  Let’s find out!!

The movie begins with the bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson) being begrudgingly picked up of the side of the road by John Ruth (Kurt Russel) who’s also a bounty hunter and is taking Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang in a nearby town of Red Rock for her crimes.  Unfortunately, there’s a blizzard coming and the driver O.B. Jackson (James Parks) isn’t inclined to risk it, so they head to a nearby waystation that’s delightfully called Minnie’s Haberdashery, though they find another straggler in the snowy wasteland along the way in the form of Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.  Once they arrive, they find Oswald Mobray (Tim Roth), Joe Gag (Michael Madsen), former Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) as well as Bob (Demián Bichir) who’s running the place in Minnie’s absence.  Now John Ruth doesn’t trust any of these mother fuckers and none of them seem to be good wholesome people in the first place, but there’s nothing John can do with the blizzard blocking all means of travel, so they have to share this tiny space until it clears up.  Will this be a peaceful affair as these nine strangers (yes, there’s nine instead of eight of them) get to know each other, or will things erupt into a cacophony of violence, blood, and racial epithets?  Well I’m sure you can guess which route this movie takes, but is it at least super captivating to watch, right!?

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“If you turn out to be the death of me, I’m gonna fucking kill you…”

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Cinema Dispatch: Concussion

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Concussion and all the images you see in this review are owned by Columbia Pictures

Directed by Peter Landesman

Mr. Fourth of July is back with his latest attempt to win that Oscar after Ali, The Pursuit of Happyness, and 7 Pounds didn’t do a damn thing for him.  Well at least this one is a story that’s still fresh in people’s mind as it explores the events that led up to the NFL being in hot water over the dangers of head injuries and the consequences of not getting these issues treated in their former players.  Does William Smith Jr finally have the movie that will get him an Academy Award that he can shove in Leonardo DiCaprio’s face, or does the search continue for Will to find something that will prove once and for all what a great actor he is?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) who happens to be on duty at a Pittsburg morgue the day that a former NFL player is found dead after long bouts of mental illness and medical problems.  During the autopsy, Omalu discovers some irregularities that lead to him eventually discovering a hereto unknown disease known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) that is caused by repeated blows to the head which is something that happens quite frequently to NFL players.  Clearly this needs to be explored further as it’s clear that other older players begin to exhibit extreme mental issues, but the NFL instead decides to bury the guys work and deny it incessantly.  Omalu though continues to push for more research and for the NFL to acknowledge the diseases existence, but to little avail at least at first.  Along his journey to get the truth out there, he starts to pursue a romantic relationship with a fellow churchgoer (Prema Mutiso played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw) and eventually meets a former NFL doctor (Julian Bailes played by Alec Bladwin) who knows first-hand what it’s like to see former players’ minds deteriorate.  With support from the medical community and his girlfriend along with the insider knowledge of Dr. Bailes, will Dr. Omalu get his way and save hundreds of people in the process, or is this a task too herculean for any one man to accomplish?

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“And the Oscar goes to… Will Smith.  I’ll get up looking shocked, kiss Jada on the cheek, and lightly job down there.  Gotta make sure to thank all my kids, thrown in a joke here and there…”

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Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Worst Movies of 2015

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

And now for the list that you’ve all been waiting for!  The one where I tear down the works of people way more successful than me!  The caveats here are basically the same as my best of, but honestly I think they won’t be as detrimental to this list as they were to that one.  The movies I didn’t get a chance to see tended to be the better films of this year and the theater I go to ALWAYS gets the big blockbusters which are the movies people expect critics like us to tear apart anyway.  True, I didn’t see much form the first part of the year (thankfully skipping over Paul Blart Mall Cop 2) but there was PLENTY of shit to go around and while I’m sure there are some glaring omissions here and there, I’m pretty sure this list is going to be a lot more of what you should be expecting from this age old tradition of shaming Hollywood’s bloat and apathy.  No point in beating around the bush any longer.  Let’s get started!!

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Cinema Dispatch: Top 10 Best Movies of 2015

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

As is tradition with all critics of entertainment, there comes a time when we must take all of our in depth analysis and well thought out arguments, and then condense it all down into a list that leaves no room for ambiguity because everyone loves things crystal clear for everyone to pick apart!  Well okay, it’s actually TWO lists and people tend to prefer the bad one, but we’re gonna save that for next time.  For now, it’s the best movies of 2015!  Before we get started however, just a few caveats.

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I DIDN’T SEE EVERYTHING THIS YEAR

In fact, I barely saw anything for the first half and when I thought of going back and trying to watch some of those that I missed, I learned that both Amazon and Netflix are absolutely DREADFUL when it comes to recent releases.  Neither services has more than maybe three or four movies that came out this year and the most mainstream among those was probably that Sean Penn action movie you’ve already forgotten about.  Needless to say that catching up would have cost a small fortune (on top of what I’m already spending at the theater) so I decided against it.  Also, the theaters I have access to rarely have anything outside of a mainstream release.  Hell, Dope is probably the most indie movie that my nearby theater had all year.  So the fact that I’ve missed almost everything before the summer and that my theaters don’t have as much variety as I’d like means that this is going to be a blockbuster heavy list.  It sucks that I couldn’t see more interesting stuff that’s making waves like The Danish Girl, Spotlight, or even Carol, but that’s how it shook out this year.  Hey, once I become one of those PROFESSIONAL film critics and join one of those associations, I’m sure the studios will be sending movies to ME instead of making me pay to watch them!

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MAKING LISTS IS HARD

Now I did take some time to consider the order for this list and overall I am very happy about it, but when it comes to the top three it’s really REALLY close.  I’m happy with the order I chose for them but think of it as pretty much a three way tie as all of them are fantastic in their own ways.

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We good?  Okay, ON WITH THE ARBITRARY RANKING!!!!

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Cinema Dispatch: Daddy’s Home

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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Daddy’s Home and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Sean Anders

While Adam McKay is trying to branch out with The Big Short, his longtime collaborator Will Ferrell seems to be doing the same thing he’s been doing since Bush was in the White House.  You could make the comparisons between him and Adam Sandler, but honestly I still find the guy funny and despite always going back to the man-child well, he’s still willing to branch out every once in a while with films Like Everything Must Go and even The LEGO Movie where he actually got to make an honest statement about the people he has so often portrayed in film.  This one though doesn’t look to be all that challenging for him or his audience, but it can still be funny, right?  They’ve got Mark Wahlberg in there, and he’s proven himself to be hilarious in other movies.  Will this be the perfect comedy to end 2015 on, or is this going to be one more reason we can’t wait to see the year end?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is about Will Ferrell playing some guy who’s a step dad and Marky Mark from the Funky Bunch playing the biological father of the family Will Ferrell married into.  Will Ferrell has spent the last year or so trying desperately to connect with his new step children and it finally seems like they’re starting to accept him when Marky Mark calls up and says he’s coming over to visit.  Misunderstands and double talk then ensue which somehow leads to Marky Mark staying in the garage of their new house and he spends most of the film trying to undercut Will Ferrell and win back his family that he abandoned many years ago.   Seems like a tough sell, but it turns out that the kids have mythologized him and he’s also a real MAN’S MAN so who couldn’t fall in love with that, am I right?  Can Will Ferrell prove his manly dad-ness enough to convince his wife to NOT abandon him (which really seems like an unlikely scenario), or will Marky Mark get his way long enough to get bored with his family again and leave them twisting in the wind?  Can this AT LEAST be better than The Other Guys?  Please?

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“Are you sure this is gonna work?”     “Oh yeah!  Definitely!”     “Let me rephrase that.  Are you sure this is going to work FOR ME?”     “Oh… Uh, no.  Not even a little.”

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Cinema Dispatch: The Big Short

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 2 Comments

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The Big Short and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Adam McKay

So the guy who directed both Anchorman Movies, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys is gonna sit here and try to tell us about the housing crisis?  Yeah right!  Who’s gonna take THAT seriously!?  Wait, they’ve got Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, AND Ryan Gosling?  It’s also written by the writer of Moneyball?  Well I certainly didn’t see THAT coming. Then again, it’s not like he hasn’t taken on relevant targets in the past.  Just look at Anchorman 2!  That took a lot of pot shots at Fox News and the media in general, even if it was surrounded by a lot of stupid.  So can the guy who brought us four Will Farrell man-child movies manage to make something a bit more mature while still giving it a proper sense of humor, or will this be just another painful example of someone who is WAY out of his depth and has no idea what the hell their doing and go back to his old shtick to give us Step Brothers 2: Now There’s Three of Them or Something?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows several people in the years leading up to the big financial crisis of 2008 brought about by the crash of the housing market.  As we interweave between these stories of people who saw it coming, it’s slowly dawns on them (and the audience) just how absolutely unattainable the market was at the time and just how corrupt the system got which is what led to everything going to hell.  That’s really about it as most of the characters serve as either audience avatars or exposition machines to keep the audience in the loop as to what’s going on.  It’s definitely more about giving the us an idea of the scope of the problem rather than telling personal stories within them, but a couple of the character eek out an arc here and there like the young investors Charlie Geller and Jamie Shipley (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock) who are new to all this and get caught right in the god damn middle or even Mark Baum (Steve Carell) who’s already got it out for the big banks and at first sees this as just another thing to call them out on until he realizes how dep the rabbit hole goes in all of this.

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“You ever see that movie Basket Case?  Imagine that America is Duane Bradley and everyone in this room is fucking Belial.”

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Cinema Dispatch: Point Break

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

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Point Break and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros Pictures

Directed by Ericson Core

When Star Wars and Creed are bringing back beloved franchises in spectacular fashion, it takes a lot of nerve to try and sneak this movie right in the middle of it.  The original Point Break is one of those movies I’ve been meaning to see for a really long time, but never got around to for one reason or another.  Still, from what very little I know about it and from how the trailer for this remake looked, it definitely seemed like a shaky proposition to try and bring it back like this.  Still, I’ve been surprised by plenty of movies this year and I certainly don’t have the last movie to compare this to.  Could this be a solid remake of a minor action classic, or will this be yet another movie to throw in the pile of unnecessary remakes along with the likes of Total Recall whose writer coincidentally wrote this movie as well?  Let’s find out!!

The movie follows an FBI agent who as far as I can tell is ONLY referred to by his nickname Utah (Luke Bracey) that is brought in on a case that involves EXTREME thieves that are pulling some Robin Hood shtick with rich corporations.  The first of their crimes that the FBI is made aware of is the group driving motocross bikes through the twentieth story of a diamond sorting building and stealing all of them before crashing through the windows and parachuting to safety.  How they got the bikes all the way up there and how they weren’t caught once they landed is left a mystery, but let’s just say they escaped by sheer manly bro-force.  The reason why the FBI (or at least this one boss of his played by Delroy Lindo) wants Utah on the case is because the guy was an extreme sports practitioner before joining with the FBI.  That is… before the accident.

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“Remember when I was in the Point Break remake?  That was a dark time in my life…”

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Cinema Dispatch: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 11 Comments

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens and all the images you see in this review are owned by Walt Disney Studios

Directed by JJ Abrams

Alright, look.  This review is going to have spoilers and if you’re worried about that, then here are my thoughts real quick.

The movie is fantastic.  The bad guy stuff is the best, the good guy stuff is bogged down a bit by the references they’re trying to fit in, but overall it’s a fun ride and a worthy successor to the original trilogy.

You got that?  Okay, here comes the rest of the review.

The movie starts off with Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) getting a sci-fi USB stick that contains the location of Luke Skywalker who has been missing for a very long time.  Before he can take the flash drive to The Resistance however, the village he’s in gets raided by the new bad guys named The First Order who are the Empire in all but name.  Kind of like how Kentucky Fried Chicken changed their name to KFC.  Nothing’s changed, but now they have a less obviously evil/unhealthy name.  Anyway, Poe gets captured by Darth Vader 2.0, also known as Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) but not before Poe gives the USB stick to R2-D2 2.0, also known as BB-8.  The droid makes his way to a scavenger named Rey (Daisy Ridley) who takes it in while simultaneously A Storm Trooper named FN-2187 (John Boyega) breaks out Poe from the evil starship.  Their escape is cut short when they get shot out of space and crash land on the planet below (the one BB-8 and Rey are on) and FN-2187 (also known as Finn) is the sole survivor.  His deal is that he wants to get as far away from The First Order as quickly as possible, but now that he’s on the dirt planet he doesn’t really have a way to do that.  Fortunately, he eventually finds the droid and Rey, poses as a Resistance fighter, and convinces them to help him escape the planet and drop off the droid (with him escaping to wherever the hell he wants to in the process).  Can these two make it to The Resistance before The First Order can capture them?  Will Finn step up to the plate when the time comes, or will his self-preservation instincts kick in before he has a chance to play the hero?  Is Rey more than what she appears to be and is the she the key to stopping The First Order once and for all?  WHERE’S HAN SOLO!?!?  Oh wait, there he is.

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“Chewie… We’re gonna make a SHIT load of money doing this!”     “Rheeaaahhr!!”

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Cinema Dispatch: Krampus

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

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Krampus and all the images you see in this review are owned by Universal Pictures

Directed by Michael Dougherty

There really hasn’t been a good Christmas horror movie since Gremlins, has there?  I’ve heard good things about Rare Exports, but that didn’t even get a decent sized theater release here in the US.  That’s all about to change… maybe, with this horror film about the holiday season’s canonical version of The Grinch!  It certainly has an uphill battle considering how hard it is to walk that line between scary and being hilarious (intentionally anyway) but there’s some strong talent behind this film so there’s a good chance they can actually pull it off!  Will this movie manage to be a fun horror comedy that becomes a holiday staple, or is this a giant piece of cinematic coal that we’re being punished with for giving War Room so much money?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is about a family who gets together on Christmas despite the fact that no one likes anyone.  You’ve got Tom and Sarah (Adam Scott and Toni Collette) who are the parents of Beth and Max (Stefania LaVie Owen and Emjay Anthony) and they’re playing host to Toni’s sister Linda (Allison Tolman), her husband Howard (David Koechner), and their three kids Stevie, Jordan, and Howie Jr (Lolo Owen, Queenie Samuel, and Maverick Flack).  Oh, and there’s a baby in there somewhere along with bitter sardonic Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell).  Wait, am I forgetting anyone?  THAT’S RIGHT!!  Tom’s mother Omi (Krista Sadler) who will play Miss Exposition here as she knows ALL about Krampus yet doesn’t tell the family until well after the shit has hit the fan.  Anyway, as you’d expect around the holidays, tensions flare up and there’s a huge fight that causes young Max to finally give up on the Christmas spirit.  This decision makes completely responsible for what happens next and the deaths of whichever loved ones get caught in the crossfire.  A huge storm rolls in that cuts off this neighborhood from the rest of the world and takes out the power and cell phone towers.  There’s something else out there though and the family soon finds themselves besieged by Gremlins knock offs, snow monsters, and a really fucked up Jack in the Box before Krampus finally shows up to deal with this family himself.  Can they survived Yuletide massacre long enough to open their presents?  Will Max be forever haunted by the fact that his sadness (which is something that’s REALLY outside of his control) is the root cause of all this horrifying shit being rained upon them?  Is it at least as good as Santa’s Slay!?

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Even if it is, that’s some serious damning with faint praise.

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Cinema Dispatch: Creed

~ Matt Vetrano ~ 3 Comments

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Creed and all the images you see in this review are owned by MGM Pictures

Directed by Ryan Coogler

I have this DVD boxset with the first three Rocky films in it that I think my dad got one Christmas.  He didn’t watch them all that often so I ended up holding onto the boxset and I would watch those three ALL the damn time.  A lot of people like the fourth film, but for me, Rocky has always been the first three movies which creates a perfect arc as Rocky starts out as a bum, eventually beats the champ, and they become friends afterwards.  Hell, it even ends right where Rocky begins (inside a crappy little gym) only now with Apollo Creed there as a reminder of how much has changed in such a short amount of time.  I didn’t catch Rocky Balboa until its home release, but it felt a perfect swansong for the series and Stallone proved once again that he really is a talented guy and deserved winning that Oscar.  Now we’re back with yet another film in that universe, but the dynamics have changed.  Not only is not really a Rocky film anymore, it’s not even a Stallone film considering that the writing and directing was handled by Ryan Coogler who himself is to proving to be an immense talent very early in his career.  Will this be an inspired continuation of series that still manages to be its own film, or will this be a disappointing cash grab on the level of Rocky 5 considering they pretty much have the same premise?  Let’s find out!!

The movie is about Adonis “Donnie” Johnson who is the son of Apollo Creed; the child of one of his mistress and born several months after Apollo’s death which should STILL put him at about 29, but whatever.  Continuity in the Rocky series is pretty wonky as it is.  Anyway, the kid is eventually found in a youth detention center by Apollo Creed’s widow (Mary Anne Creed played by Phylicia Rashad who FINALLY managed to be a movie that’s NOT directed by Tyler Perry) and she adopts the boy.  We cut to when he’s an adult and despite having money and having a good life, he still can’t seem to resist the urge to fight, so between shifts at his day job he fights in low level boxing matches under the name Donnie Johnson.  It’s not enough for him though, so he decides to quit his job, move to Philly, and get his father’s best friend to train him to be a professional boxer.  Will Rocky be willing to step back into that life after leaving it behind him?  Will Donnie finally find what is he’s looking for if he can convince Rocky to train him and put him in fights?  How many times will YOU cry watching this?

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“You get this to work kid, and you’re gonna be set for at least four more movies.”

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