Review Round-Up: December

Happy holidays everyone! These will be my last reviews of the year before I post my "Best Of" Superlatives, Top Ten of the year, and most anticipated of 2019. I just want to say thank you to all my readers out there! I may not be writing as frequently as I once did, but I have been super busy! Whether you're reading this in a waiting room or on your laptop or sitting on the toilet - I hope you enjoy!

Aquaman

Dir. James Wan

Aquaman, with his gaudy orange and green costume and ability to talk to fish, has sort of been the laughing stock of DC Comics characters for a long time. But in the latest DCU film from director James Wan, Jason Momoa ups the character's "cool factor," making him a hulking, tatted-up surfer bro with a Rob Zombie beard. Simultaneously embracing Aquaman's innately silly concept while giving the character a "badass" revamp, this latest superhero flick does do a considerable job bringing the character to new places - but the story of this half-breed Atlantian/ human and his adventures trying to unite the surface world and the water world is a mostly incomprehensible, CGI-filled mess with cringe-worthy acting and insane plot devices that make no sense at all (this movie argues that, yes, dinosaurs are alive and well, living in the Earth's core).

Final Verdict:

SKIP IT

Review Round-Up: October and November

To all the people that say the first year of teaching is the most difficult: I hope you're right. My life has been practically a constant stream of lesson planning, grading, meetings, e-mailing, disciplining, and losing sleep! Despite all that, I've been able to sneak in a bunch of movies! So I may not be able to write full-length reviews like I used to, but hopefully these bite-sized "review round-ups" will satiate you loyal blog readers! Thanks for reading!

25 Scariest Shots in Horror Movies

Halloween is coming up, and us film nerds around the globe are prepping our horror movie marathons. For this blog post, however, instead of making a typical horror movie review or "best of" list to ring in the season, I wanted to focus on the smallest building block of film: THE SHOT. Movies are more or less just a series of pictures flashing by your eyes, and some of these single images have the ability to conjure our deepest, darkest fears. This blog post is a celebration of 25 iconic, unsettling, downright creepy-crawly shots that have haunted our dreams over the years and the cinematographers who helped immortalize them on screen.

* = Oscar-nominated cinematography

NONA-REVIEW: I've Been Busy

Hello Blog Readers:
My life has been pretty hectic lately. I just started a new job as a high school English teacher, teaching three blocks of Freshman English and two blocks of Essay Writing, rendering my "free time" very limited - including the time to write full-length movie reviews! I've seen so many movies since my last batch of reviews in August(!), but I haven't found the time to properly sit and write them. But instead of letting that backlog of theatrical experiences fester, I wanted to get my opinion out there on all the movies I've seen over the past months in one giant post!

So this won't be as in-depth as some of my other blogs, but I don't want to let this passion of mine wither and die just because I finally have a "real" job! Also, keep an eye out this October, I have a special, epic Halloween-themed blog post planned!

Thank you for reading and enjoy,
Peter Waters

RESULTS: 2018 Summer Box Office Predictions

While I'm happy to have my best summer box office prediction year on record, it's depressing that there is not a single non-sequel film on the top ten! The only big shocker this year - in my opinion - is how Solo: A Star Wars Story under-performed. Its relatively low opening for the franchise is interesting to consider. Are people getting sick of Star Wars? Were people turned off by a different actor playing Han Solo? Or was it released in too crowded a season, between The Avengers and Deadpool? Besides that the usual suspects (Marvel, Pixar, Dinosaurs) all made out great, making this a particularly unsurprising year!

Here are my final results:

Mission Impossible: Fallout, Christopher Robin, Mamma Mia 2, Blindspotting Reviews

Mission Impossible: Fallout
Dir. Christopher McQuarrie
Watch Trailer

At this point, the Mission Impossible series is less about its main protagonist, Ethan Hunt, and more about its star, Tom Cruise. With each film, the line between character and actor is blurred, with Cruise doing his own stunts, constantly one-upping himself by dangling from the highest building in the world in Ghost Protocol, or holding onto a plane during takeoff in Rogue Nation. For over 20 years(!), Cruise has put his body on the line for our entertainment, and in that respect, even at the ripe age of 56, Mission: Impossible - Fallout totally delivers on the running, jumping, ass-kicking, death-defying madman that is expected with the name "Tom Cruise" on the marquee!

Ant-Man and the Wasp, The First Purge, Sorry to Bother You, Whitney Reviews

Ant-Man and the Wasp
Dir. Peyton Reed
Watch Trailer

Coming off of the epic crossover event Avengers: Infinity War where the fate of the universe was in the balance, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a refreshingly smaller adventure, in more ways than one! It's light and funny and takes everything that worked about the first Ant-Man and expands the world and characters in fun new ways. Although the movie nerd world will forever question what Edgar Wright's Ant-Man would have looked like had he not been given the boot - Peyton Reed more than stepped up to the plate!