Deepwater Horizon, The Magnificent Seven, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Eight Days a Week Reviews

Deepwater Horizon
Dir. Peter Berg
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Armageddon and Deep Impact. Volcano and Dante's Peak. Batman v. Superman and Captain America Civil War. All of these are examples of the strange phenomena of "twin movies" - two films released at roughly the same time that have seemingly identical plotlines. The same could be argued for Deepwater Horizon and Sully, my previous featured review. Both films deal with very recent true stories involving blue collar American heroes thrown into a crisis, who bravely come together to survive by means of pure professionalism, workmanship, and mastery over complex machines. While I much prefer Clint Eastwood's introspective Sully to the more traditionally "Hollywood" Deepwater Horizon, I do appreciate that both films take the time to genuinely give appreciation towards those people who go into work every day and simply do their jobs as well as they can.

Sully, Snowden, Blair Witch, The Innocents Reviews

Sully
Dir. Clint Eastwood
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The problem with many real-life stories depicted on screen, especially if they were covered in the news as much and as recently as Captain "Sully" Sullenberger's emergency plane landing in the Hudson River, is that we already know how things turn out. There's no tension as to whether or not Sully will "make it"; we know that all the passengers survived. It's a story about a nice guy who saved a bunch of people and was immediately hailed as a hero - that doesn't exactly make for satisfying drama. However, what I didn't know about this story going in, and what the film primarily focuses on, is the aftermath of the crash and the National Transportation Safety Board's investigation into whether or not Sully's critical decisions put the passengers in unnecessary risk. I found the procedural nature of this investigation to be really engrossing, and the clinical, unsentimental manner in which Clint Eastwood captures everyone - from the captain to air traffic control to the investigative team - just doing their jobs extremely proficiently in a time of crisis made Sully a surprisingly intense, dramatic, dynamic experience. Plus it features possibly one of the best plane crash sequences ever put to film.

Rob Zombie's 31, Morgan, The Light Between Oceans, Southside with You Reviews

31
Dir. Rob Zombie
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Homicidal clowns, backwoods hillbillies, brutal violence and mayhem: these are a few of Rob Zombie's favorite things. The hard rocker-by-day, horror director-by-night is back at it again with another movie that's best to leave grandma at home to see: 31, about a traveling group of carnival workers kidnapped by crazed aristocrats on Halloween night and forced to play a twisted game of life-or-death called "31." For 12 hours, they must fight to survive against an endless parade of increasingly dangerous maniacs, sort of like The Hunger Games as seen through the eyes of Charles Manson. While this horror movie had the potential to be a fast-paced, disturbing thrill ride through hell, ultimately Mr. Zombie rests a little too much on his laurels, staying inside his "comfort zone," making this film his most bland so far, and even strays into self-parody territory.

RESULTS: Summer 2016 Box Office Predictions

Back in May I predicted which summer flicks would reign supreme at the box office, and as usual, the box office proved to be unpredictable! That elusive #1 spot slipped by me again! Who knew it would be cartoon fish that would dethrone a superhero all-star bash? Here are some of my quick observations of this year's season, in convenient bullet-point form, followed by the results:

Kubo and the Two Strings, Don't Breathe, War Dogs, Hell or High Water Reviews

Kubo and the Two Strings
Dir. Travis Knight
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Stop-motion animation studio Laika has established a foothold against the modern tidal wave of 3D CGI cartoons with a series of refreshingly morbid children's entertainment like Coraline and Paranorman; Kubo and the Two Strings is a similarly dark and beautifully hand-crafted tale, only the ghouls and ghosts have been replaced by samurais and badass origami warriors. While Kubo suffers from the same "hero's journey" plot that's literally older than film itself, and at times feels disjointed, with Kubo's voyages more or less evoking the "fetch quest" aspects of video games like Legend of Zelda, it still ranks as one of the most beautiful-looking films of the year, and its painstaking attention to detail is astonishing.

Sausage Party, Pete's Dragon, Florence Foster Jenkins, Captain Fantastic Reviews

Sausage Party
Dir. Conrad Vernon & Greg Tiernan
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While there have been precedents for R-Rated "adults only" animated films (i.e. South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, Fritz the Cat), writer-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are the first to plant the flag for raunchy 3D cartoons in the Pixar vein. Like many of Pixar's films, which employ the familiar formula of "The Secret Life of (non-human thing)," the stoners who gave us Superbad and This is the End explore the secret life of food, which if you think about it has horrifying implications. Sausage Party is essentially the college freshman version of VeggieTales - featuring non-stop immature sex jokes, lazy racial stereotypes, and even hot dogs that smoke pot out of a kazoo. While I was hoping for a clever, pun-filled adult-oriented Pixar-esque film, what I got was an obnoxious, shocking just for the sake of it bro-fest that rarely made me laugh.

Suicide Squad, Jason Bourne, Nine Lives, Life Animated Reviews

Suicide Squad
Dir. David Ayer
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While we're already in "Phase Three" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Warners' DC Films division has just barely learned to crawl with only three wittle movies under their belt, and there's so much fan-created hooplah over which studio is "better," you could almost replace the words 'DC' and 'Marvel' with 'Democrat' and 'Republican' in any given news story and the fervent passion between each side would be just as intense. Before it was even released Suicide Squad's generally negative critical response on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes caused a petition from unemployed mouth-breathers to shut the site down. Hopefully they don't come after my blog as well, because I also found Suicide Squad to be a bit of a mess.