Reviews

The first Frozen was kind of a snoozer for me. My daughter has been obsessed by it since she was a baby but for me it was less impressive than Tangled and only marginally good.

The new Frozen was a pleasant surprise. My now 4 year old daughter loved it but it was me who was laughing and smiling the whole way through the movie. The story is better than the reviews had led me to believe. There were real stakes and each of the main characters had a solid arc. The movie was visually stunning. Josh Gad holds the comedy crown now for a Disney movie because Olaf was absolutely hilarious and hit on kid level and adult level at the same time. Both my daughter and I left the theater feeling elated and at the end of the day that's what counts. This was a great family movie.

PS: A lot of reviews complain that the new songs weren't 'memorable'. I have to applaud Disney for making new songs that worked but weren't 'memorable'. I couldn't live with a new 'Let It Go' earworm in my house for the next few years.

My wife and I are always arguing over what show we will watch on Netflix. Last night we settled on 'No Tomorrow' and tonight we are caught up on all the available episodes. The show is well acted, hilarious, endearing and a tiny bit gripping. We can't wait for the next episode to come out tomorrow. We love the show so much that we are watching with a little feeling of impending doom, wondering if it will be cancelled. Hopefully we will get a second season... we will be waiting with bated breath! Tori and Joshua are just incredible, and Jonathan, Sarayu and Jesse are hilarious. Where the hell did they find Amy Pietz?! She's ridiculously awesome as Dierdre. The supporting cast are also hilarious. We have perma-grins the last two days watching this show. The show seemed cheezy at first, but I relate it to 'Chuck' a lot. The cheeziness is intentional and ads to the plot. Give it a chance people, we need more!

When I decided to see the movie today I reluctantly agreed to bring my Wife and her Aunt. I was thinking 'oh boy, they are going to HATE this movie'. Hell, even I thought I might hate the movie based on the negative reviews, but I could not have been more wrong. This is the first superhero movie my wife has ever sat through and she loved it as much as I did.

The good: Moody, atmospheric, dark... but not depressing as so many reviews claim. It is a tense affair rife with emotion. I found the various subplots tied together very nicely by the start of the climax. Eisenberg was the glue that bonded this film together and he was incredible. Batfleck was perfect. Cavill was pretty one dimensional but that's really the case with Superman in general, and he really does Superman well. The cinematography was absolutely epic. The score was a little heavy handed at times, but it was still really great. The movie had some interesting things to say about gods and monsters and that theme was presented in a very intelligent manner.

The bad: There were a few groan moments in the movie, mostly related to shoehorning Wonder Woman and references to other JLA characters into the movie. The biggest groan was the way Superman and Batman became insta-friends, I think they could have handled this MUCH better. This movie is humourless aside from the occasional Eisenberg moment. I'm worried about Gal Gadot pulling off a solo Wonder Woman movie, she looks great (REALLY great), but I'm not sure if she has the acting chops to pull it off.

All in all I am giving this 9/10 because despite it's flaws we all left the theatre awestruck. Everyone in the theatre clapped at the end. This movie really delivered and I am looking very forward to seeing it again..and again.

I consider myself a bit of cinephile...yet this hidden gem escaped my attention for 7 years. I stumbled upon it tonight on a random search for things I hadn't seen. I was not disappointed.

This is a tight, short, compact beauty of a movie. An acting tour de force (ironically between two irish actors in a western). This movie took in less box office in it's run than 'Taken 2' took in in it's first hour, but what a movie! The whole thing is very atmospheric, moody...you really feel for the two lead characters. Uniquely we never get vested in who is the hero and who is the villain. They both have redeeming qualities, and they both have their dark side. I never felt I was on either side of the equation, I just watched the story unfold without the obligatory Hollywood right vs. wrong, good vs. evil. It was a simple story between two good men and their past misgivings catching up to them. It's not the greatest movie I have ever seen, I didn't learn anything new, but it was a breath of fresh air in the era of cookie cutter movies. The ending was about as anti-Hollywood as I've ever seen.

Watch this, you will not be disappointed.

I'm going to say this right off the bat: I'm not the world's biggest Tarantino fan. I truly LIKE his movies and enjoy them but I'm no 'Tarantino Scholar' proclaiming the virtues of every scene and line of every movie. I went into Django Unchained expecting to be entertained but I did not expect anything earth-jarring.

Boy was I wrong. I feel like this movie is the ultimate expression of Tarantino's 'F*#k you Hollywood' style of film making. This movie doesn't have proper structure, flow, editing, or even make a whole lot of sense. It's simply pure hilarious creative pleasure! I laughed harder than I have in years, to the point I had tears in my eyes. I was never bored for a minute. If the point of a movie is to ENTERTAIN than this is one of the best movies ever made.

I'll skip the commentary on performances beyond this : Christoph Waltz is a genius, Samuel L. Jackson has never been so entertaining, Jamie Foxx has never been so watchable, and Leonardo DiCaprio is one of the most talented and Chameleon like actors in history.

You will never look at your watch during the epic running time. I could have sat through another hour of this easily.

There has been some controversy regarding the language and topic of the movie but I say good on Tarantino and his cast of talented black people for going beyond this ridiculous self-imposed censorship society has put upon the topic of the history of slavery. We satirically make light of all kinds of tragic historical times. We insert comedy into almost every movie about every war to great effect...and that's what slavery in the USA was: a war. A war about decency vs. indecency. I like that this movie reminded me how horrible this scar on the history of the world truly is. Don't bury the past, remind us of the past and give us the pleasure of a few stories about the horrors where the beaten beat the beaters if you know what I mean.

I rate this 10/10. I didn't learn anything new, I didn't find anything profound, I don't think this movie will change the world. It's pure unadulterated over the top ENTERTAINMENT.