Tag: films

I Saw the Light (2016) // [review + Q&A]

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There was a screening of the new Hank Williams biopic, I Saw the Light, a few days ago, but I wasn’t too keen on going, as I wasn’t much of a country fan at all, much less know anything about Hank Williams. The extent of what I knew about the movie was that Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen were in it. (And people thought they were dating as a result.)

Then I saw that the screening included a special Q&A with filmmakers. That is a little more interesting, but again, I didn’t really have a keen interest in the film at the time.

And then, I saw that a friend of mine had gone to a New York screening and I realized something then.

Tom Hiddleston was doing the Q&A after the screening.

Sorry the photos are so blurry!
Tom Hiddleston and Marc Abraham

That’s right, the star of the film, fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston, and the director, Marc Abraham, were touring with their new film.

Sorry for the grainy video but Tom Hiddleston really wanted to sing “I Saw the Light” with us. #isawthelight

A video posted by Starr (@sipofstarrshine) on Mar 29, 2016 at 7:43pm PDT

(Having trouble with the embedding here, so let me know if this video shows up!)

They were in New York and the day before they arrived in DC, Tom made a Colbert appearance. I’ll share some of the insights that Tom and Marc provided throughout my review so here we go!

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Knight of Cups (2016)

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For those who are familiar with and love Terrence Malick’s work, I am sorry.

https://i0.wp.com/cdn1-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/knight-of-cups/czlm7uvvaaayh1f-jpg-large.jpg

I really couldn’t stand Knight of Cups and all of its “experimental” splendor. To me, it made a concerted effort to be deep and profound, but these profundities were either force fed to us or floated past audiences under the pretenses of art. And I think that was what was frustrating to me, was how Emperor’s New Clothes this movie felt to me. If I didn’t get it, then it was because I’m too crass and unrefined to understand this high art.Read More »

2015 in Film

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It’s time for my annual movie round-up! It feels like another year that went by without me really seeing as many films as I wanted to. That’s always the case, but I know that this year, my schedule got crazy a few separate times (as clearly evidenced by my super spotty update schedule)…

Running down in the order of the list that Wikipedia has, here’s what I’ve seen this year:

  1. The Wedding Ringer (nailed it)
  2. Cinderella
  3. Trainwreck
  4. Furious 7
  5. Avengers: Age of Ultron
  6. Pitch Perfect 2
  7. The Age of Adaline
  8. Mad Max: Fury Road
  9. Inside Out
  10. Jurassic World
  11. Ted 2
  12. Ant-Man
  13. Self/Less
  14. Pixels
  15. The Danish Girl
  16. The Martian
  17. The Intern
  18. Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens
  19. The Big Short

Definitely a sparse year in terms of reviews written, eh? Should I be writing reviews for movies that I’m not seeing at early screenings? I just figure those were the only ones of value to most of you, but please let me know if you don’t mind seeing a review after a movie’s release date.

2015 Movies

Past annual movie round-ups: 2014 | 2013 | 2012

What did you see this past year?
Any must-see movies that I missed??

Self/Less (2015)

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I was a little dubious of this movie. I love Ryan Reynolds (he used to be my #1 of all time, I have watched almost every single one of his movies) and sci-fi movies in general, so when I got the chance to see Self/Less early, I was on board.

I won’t offer any spoilers in this review. It was a pretty interesting movie, with the premise being that the dying Damian Hale (Ben Kingsley) opts to have his consciousness transferred to an empty vessel of a body that was genetically engineered in a lab for prime performance (that perfect specimen being Ryan Reynolds, of course). As the trailer indicates, he soon finds out that this body does not come with no strings attached and that, in fact, this body had a life and a family. Chaos ensues.

Lemme just say Ryan Reynolds kills it with this movie. He’s been doing a lot of really great work both as a dramatic actor and as an action star. (Also, he looks amazing throughout this entire film, okay? There I said it, the man is a beautiful human specimen.) He plays off the other characters really well and just, I don’t know, he carried the entire film on his shoulders with ease.

Gotta nitpick on Ben Kingsley really quickly: why the awful New York accent, Sir Kingsley? You’re better than this. The accent sounded horrendous, like some terrible mix of his natural British accent and a “New York accent”. It was very sad to hear. He gets top billing in the movie, but he is only in the film for the first 10-15 minutes and then we don’t see anymore of him.

Matthew William Goode plays a much larger role in the movie. He seems to be getting typecast as the brilliant but subtle jack*ss, i.e. in The Imitation Game, and he does a pretty good job of doing it. His character is composed for the entirety of the film in that eerie way that some villains are.

Mmmm I don’t know, I can’t say I loved this movie. The story was not that creative given a pretty cool premise and I didn’t feel much for characters that weren’t played by Ryan Reynolds or Victor Garber. (Always love Victor Garber.) I hear Advantageous, now on Netflix, does the premise better so maybe I’ll check that out.

Self/Less is in theaters today, July 10.

Trainwreck (2015)

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Back. With. A. New. Review! Oh, I’ve missed attending early screenings so much. (Thanks Fandango for hooking us up, even though it’s super shady to be offering free concessions vouchers and then not honoring that offer when moviegoers show up to the theater. I know concessions is how theaters make most of their money but there is no need for DECEIT, Fandango. For shame.)

I was invited to see Amy Schumer’s new feature film, Trainwreck, by my regular movie crew. The trailers made it seem pretty funny and Amy Schumer is kind of on fire right now. She’s an incredible comedy writer and actor. If you haven’t seen any of her sketches from her show, you need to go over to Youtube or Comedy Central and do that now, you’ll be glad you did. Here’s some recommendations.

This movie had more heart than I expected. With movies like this, I expect more somber moments to be interrupted with farts or inappropriate jokes, but I think this movie just felt very real with the highs and with the lows.

Also, if Lebron James was to go into acting after retiring from the NBA, or if he was to do the Space Jam remake as has been rumored, I’d be okay with that. He was really funny in this movie, held his own quite well.

I don’t know, there’s not a whole lot for me to say about the movie, actually? It was a pretty predictable story but I laughed so hard. Amy Schumer really delivered with this one.

ALSO Tilda Swinton is in this playing the editor of the men’s magazine Amy Schumer works at and it’s really hilarious because it’s so unlike any of her past roles. In fact, it’s kind of fun spotting stars in the movie, like Mike Birbiglia, Randall Park, Ezra Miller, John Cena, Lebron James, Amare Stoudemire, Tony Romo, etc. (For all you sports fans out there.)

Mmmm sorry for the short review, I just don’t have too much to say. Trainwreck was funny. Go see it if you enjoy laughter. 

Trainwreck comes out July 17.