The opening titles of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, Phantom Thread, enthrall the viewer into a tale of twisted love and obsessive passions through the delicacy and precision of the musical score – written by former guitarist of the band Radiohead, Johnny Greenwood. In Daniel Day Lewis’ final performance before retirement, he plays Reynolds Woodcook, a fashion designer consumed by his work. He dresses heiresses and princesses in his elegant and impressive London townhouse alongside his loyal sister Cyril, played by Leslie Manville, and together they preside over their team with fanatical efficiency. He is a man too preoccupied with his own work to worry about the trivial feelings of others, like the women he sees before meeting Alma.
Are you an Outlaw or a Regulator? Christian Gudegast’s Den of Thieves (2018) pushes the viewers to choose. The movie premiered at Regal Cinemas of South Beach with noteworthy appearances from stars O’Shea Jackson Jr., Pablo Schreiber, Curtis “50 cent” Jackson, and Gerard Butler. Before the picture began, Butler, who also produced the film, discussed the feature’s six-year filmmaking process. Comedically, 50 cent continued with explaining their two weeks of military and police tactical training. As the laughter and applause slowly diminished simultaneously with the lights, the widescreen lit with the viewer promptly thrown right into the action.
Hercule Poirot aboard the Orient Express, sporting his majestic (but clearly false) mustache
To apply an overused turn of phrase, good mystery stories are typically not about the destination, but rather the journey. Despite this, the ending should still be a satisfying reveal, or else the journey would’ve been for nothing. Unfortunately based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name, Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express could’ve been an okay film, had it not managed to fumble its way to a disappointing ending.
Batman. Superman. Wonder Woman. The Flash. Cyborg. Aquaman. These are some of comic book history’s most storied heroes ever who have saved infinite dimensions from countless cataclysmic events — but they just can’t seem to beat public perception. Justice League takes place shortly after the events of Batman vs Superman. Superman’s death in the battle against Doomsday seems to have made the rounds on the inter-galactic Internet and the grossly overly-CGIed big bad Steppenwolf (Ciaran Hinds) randomly shows up on Earth to do comically generic bad guy things. Guilt-ridden by his role in Superman’s death, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) and Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) attempt to recruit some new metahumans to help them push back against Steppenwolf’s invading army of parademons.
A ‘performance art piece’ in which a man acts like an ape at a fancy dinner party
If a self-proclaimed lover of the arts doesn’t acknowledge how pretentious the world of art can be, they just might be a total hack. As the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, the event’s highest honor, Ruben Ӧstlund’s The Square is a dissection of the human conscience, served with a dose of mockery directed at the pompous attitudes of the artistic world.
The titular Black Dynamite, bringing a Kung Fu beat down on a local gang
As contradictory as it sounds, it’s difficult to make a film bad on purpose for the sake of parody. On top of needing to be cheesy and ironically bad, such a film needs to be genuinely well-made and well-written to boot. Films such as Airplane! (1981), This is Spinal Tap (1984), and Hot Fuzz (2007) are prime examples of a movie that’s made hokey and awkward on purpose. Similar to these films, Scott Sanders’ Black Dynamite (2009) is a parody of both action movies and the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s, which is not only completely self-aware in its ridiculousness, but has the quality to back it up.
For a disaster movie that shows very few disasters, Dean Devlin’s Geostorm (2017) might be bad, but not a total nightmare of a movie. Gerard Butler plays Jake, the leading man and creator of “Dutch Boy”, a set of satellites designed to control earth’s climate. After a series of technical malfunctions, his brother Max, who now has been given control over the satellite operation, quickly discovers that the errors in the system are not a complete accident. With Jake sent to the space station that runs “Dutch Boy”, the two brothers work together in attempt to prevent a massive Geostorm. Continue reading Geostorm, naturally a disaster→
