Keanu (2016)

Friday, 29 April 2016 Starr2 Comments

I’ve been a fan of comedy duo Key and Peele (Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele) since they were on MADtv together. Their Comedy Central show, Key & Peele, has churned out hit after hit after hit. Although I don’t have Comedy Central, I’ve seen nearly every single sketch available online and I can’t think of a single one I didn’t find funny.

So, when I heard they were releasing a feature film, I was definitely interested. And then my interest was confused when I saw the first few seconds of the trailer. And then my curiosity piqued when I saw the rest of the trailer.

You know what, I was pretty dubious that this movie would be funny. And I’m not sure why, seeing as how I have seen sketch comedy successes be hilarious in a feature-length film. (See Coffee Town.) Keanu was like a few different sketches that were strung together into one cohesive story. From the get-go, I was already laughing at the extremely dramatic music playing when the lights dimmed. (Me to Annie: “What is happening? Are we even in the right movie????”) I was only reassured that everything was going all right when I saw the star of the movie appear on screen: the most adorable little kitteh! (Fun fact: 7 kittens were used for the filming of Keanu. All 7 were adopted!)

If you enjoyed Key & Peele, then you will really enjoy this movie. If you’re an avid fan of the show, you’ll definitely appreciate certain nods to their sketches. (Guess who is the star of a movie they see in the movie?) Key and Peele are able to flex their comedy muscles while making subtle social commentary about blackness and drug culture and violence and language and lots of other great stuff.

George Michael? Yeah… he… he light-skinned… yeah…

Mother’s Day (2016)

Tuesday, 26 April 2016Friday, 29 April 2016 StarrLeave a comment

Thanks to a spur-of-the-moment invitation from my friend Annie, and a promise to myself to try to be more spontaneous and open-minded, I attended an early screening of the new holiday-centered ensemble-cast movie, Mother’s Day, brought to you by the same folks behind Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve.

Well, it is a Garry Marshall movie, at the end of the day, but I I did feel myself laughing and having my heartstrings tugged more than I expected. Mother’s Day has a smaller ensemble cast than the other holiday-themed movies do; whereas you’re juggling something like 20 stars in the movie (and on the poster!), we really only have a few storylines to follow in Mother’s Day, and as a result, there isn’t as much reaching around to connect the characters to each other.

I feel like where Mother’s Day does well is pretty relatable mom-centric stories, whereas previous movies mostly fun but ultimately super improbable romances.

We have the military family whose widowed father is struggling to raise 2 daughters by himself for the first time.
We have the divorcée who must share her kids – and her ex-husband – with a very young new step-mother.
We have the sisters whose close-minded parents would never approve of their spouses and, therefore, don’t know about them or their grandchildren.
We have the career woman who was forced into choosing her career so aggressively that she denies ever having been a mother until her daughter finally contacts her.

Mothers are pretty hard to mess up on making an emotional connection with the audience about, and I felt like this movie was definitely better at touching viewers than the past holiday incarnations were. As incredibly cheesy as this movie was, it was still a fun watch. If you are here for a non-cheesy rom-com, look elsewhere.Read More »

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

Friday, 1 April 2016Friday, 1 April 2016 Starr2 Comments

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!

Zootopia (2016)

Tuesday, 15 March 2016Monday, 14 March 2016 Starr3 Comments

I’m a big Disney fan, but I never find trailers for new Disney animated films particularly appealing. Maybe it’s because the trailers are more marketed towards kids and I’m still mentally stuck in a place where I’m trying to be highbrow enough to understand crazy “art” films like Knight of Cups. (Probably won’t happen…) I still remember the first trailer I ever saw for Wall-E, one of my favorite Pixar films of all time, and being pretty bored and turned off by it, because it was a one-minute clip of Wall-E collecting trash. And that was the whole trailer.

So, when a Disney animated feature film comes out, I usually don’t get particularly excited until afterwards, when the adults get hyped. In the case of Zootopia, I didn’t know much about it before the movie came out except that it was about a rabbit cop voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin and a fox voiced by Jason Bateman. Basically, everything I knew about Zootopia came from that first teaser about anthropomorphic mammals and that DMV sloth scene.

BUT, when Disneybound founder Leslie came back from an early screening raving about the amazing message behind the movie, I was really curious. All Disney movies have a good message behind them, but people don’t usually come away from watching them thinking, “Man. What a GOOD message.” However, that seemed to be the consensus after watching Zootopia, so I took Ben to see it when we had a free evening last week.

Knight of Cups (2016)

Friday, 11 March 2016Tuesday, 24 May 2016 Starr2 Comments

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

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 »