Ryan Reynolds

Life

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Life
  • IMDb: link

Life movie reviewLife is the exact opposite of Kong: Skull Island. Whereas Kong knew exactly what it was and embraced it, Life is a pretentious wannabe that flails around for far too long before ultimately turning into a cliche and running out of gas long before the credits roll.

Wanting desperately to be a genre-shaking art film which takes the science seriously and has something to say about extraterrestrial life, like the original Alien, instead director Daniel Espinosa‘s (Safe House) movie is a plodding, somber affair with nothing we haven’t seen multiple times before. Very early on, I lost track of number of extended sequences showing off the film’s art design set to ominous classical music. I get it, you guys liked 2001: A Space Odyssey. Unfortunately this isn’t the kind of movie you are making here.

Life is a bottle-show monster flick with a small group of people trapped with a creature they can’t understand let alone defeat. By the time Life gets around to throwing the pretension of actual science out the window and becomes a monster movie there’s little the latest tentacle monster can offer in way of surprise, let alone general horror.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine

/ / Home Video
  • Title: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
  • IMDb: link

X-Men Origins: Wolverine Blu-ray reviewIt’s somewhat amazing that between X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine that 20th Century Fox didn’t manage to destroy their X-Men movie franchise. For Throwback Thursday we take a look back at the first of the Wolverine standalone films. X-Men Origins: Wolverine delves into the unexplored past of Logan (Hugh Jackman) while continuing to refuse to quite nail down the exact date of his birth. Not fitting in at all with the timeline of the other X-Men films, the movie has been largely ignored in current continuity (although one important aspect does return in Logan).

Along with a brief introduction of Logan as a child, and a montage of him working with Team X, the story jumps forward to events which will pull him out of his quiet life in the Canadian wilderness with Silverfox (Lynn Collins) and lead to both his adamantium upgrade and events which will cause him to lose memories of his past.

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The Top 10 Movies of 2016

/ / Top Tens & Lists

the-best-movies-of-2016

2016 may have lacked the one knockout film to top my list, but as a whole the year produced a number of quality movies adding a depth that made it difficult to cut down the list to a meager ten. Honorable mentions include animated features Kubo and the Two Strings and Finding Dory, Mel Gibson‘s divisive Hacksaw Ridge, and the bizarrely fascinating indie gems The Eyes of My Mother, Swiss Army Man, and The Neon Demon. Enough of what didn’t make the list, on to the Best Movies of 2016!

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Criminal

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Criminal
  • IMDb: link

CriminalThe premise behind screenwriters Douglas Cook and David Weisberg‘s Criminal is fairly ridiculous, even for B-movie action flick. Sadly, it’s not nearly as entertaining as the pair’s 20 year-old collaboration – The Rock. Set in present day, the death of Agent Bill Pope (Ryan Reynolds), who alone has vital information to keep backdoor access into the missile command of the United States out of the hands of a terrorist (Jordi Mollà), causes the CIA to attempt an experimental procedure to implant Pope’s memories into a brain-damaged convict named Jericho (Kevin Costner).

Costner is an interesting choice for a remorseless cold-blooded killer forced to deal with unexpected feelings for a wife (Gal Gadot) and child (Lara Decaro) who are not his own and a mission he never signed-up for. His casting looks to be a huge misstep in the early scenes before Jericho’s operation, but the more conflicted the character becomes over the course of the film Costner’s performance begins to become one of the movie’s biggest strengths.

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Deadpool

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Deadpool
  • IMDb: link

DeadpoolFans of Deadpool rejoice, the Merc with a Mouth has made it to the big screen and has brought his raunchy hard R-rating humor with him. Not pulling any punches, director Tim Miller and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick succeed in capturing the core of one of Marvel’s most insane smart-ass characters as 20th Century and Ryan Reynolds both redeem themselves for their previous (and regrettable) collaboration of the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Kicking ass and cracking wise, Deadpool continually breaks the fourth wall while killing many, many people and making comments about the movie, various characters (and the real-life actors who play them), and even Ryan Reynolds’ other super-hero movie. Along for the ride are Morena Baccarin as Wade Wilson’s stripper girlfriend Vanessa and T.J. Miller as Wade’s equally wise-cracking best bud Weasel. And Leslie Uggams provides a couple of cheap laughs as the Merc with a Mouth’s blind roommate. Deadpool comic readers should also watch out for Deadpool’s long-suffering comic-book sidekick Bob (Rob Hayter) who earns his own cameo.

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