Tag: Movies

The Annual Movie Review of Hellscape Central (a.k.a 2017)

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Header 2017.pngDid you see that shit I wrote last year? I literally called 2016 the ‘Worst Year in Recent Memory’ and I wasn’t wrong. Well, not at the time, anyway. You know how it is; Time is just the slow death of perception. So, 2017. It kinda sucked too.

Let’s talk about movies!

This year was, cinematically speaking, fucking weird. Going into this endeavour I thought this year was super weak for film as well as…everything else. Imagine my surprise when I completed my shortlist with about 18 movies and realising that cutting eight of those was going to be REALLY, REALLY TOUGH. And that’s factoring in that there’s a lot I just haven’t had a chance to see yet. I’ll mention those at the bottom.

I’ll publish the actual Top Ten in the next week or so but this is kind of a general year in review of everything else that came out. Oh and at the very end we’ll talk about Superhero Movies because I need people to hate me. Continue reading “The Annual Movie Review of Hellscape Central (a.k.a 2017)” →

How to listen to Silence

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SILENCELet’s not screw around here and start by  laying some groundwork with a few declarative statements:

  • Martin Scorcese is one of the most consistently excellent film-makers working today or, frankly, ever.
  • His latest picture, Silence, is unabashedly masterful whether any given individual appreciates it or not.
  • Silence has the most raging hard-on for Catholicism since The Passion of the Christ.

Well, to be fair, I’ve not seen Hacksaw Ridge yet (oh, hey Andrew Garfield, trending much?) but how about we split the difference and say ‘since Mel Gibson’s last feature’? Does that work? Great! Continue reading “How to listen to Silence” →

Where to find those Fantastic Beasts

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percival-graves-and-credence-barebone-in-fantastic-beasts

First they burned Witches.

Let’s get all of the ‘review bullshit’ out of the way first. I didn’t love Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. If I’m being entirely honest, I’m not sure I especially liked it all too much, either. But I did appreciate it and I absolutely admire the hell out of it.

Some history: I was a hardcore Potter fan growing up. (As an aside, what’s the preferred nomenclature for Harry Potter geek these days? HarryHead? PotterLover? NoMug?) I started reading those books when I was eight years old and kept reading voraciously right through to the horribly rushed ending that most fans still ignore to this day. I saw all of those movies in cinemas and loved them all to some degree or another, except for Goblet of Fire which I always thought was the best book and the weakest film. But when the last Potter movie came out I wasn’t eight years old anymore. I was twenty years old.

After 12 years voraciously devouring 7 books, 8 movies, at least 3 of those awful licensed video-games and countless pieces of assorted cheap plastic merchandise Harry’s story was wrapped up in every conceivable medium and I was done too. Continue reading “Where to find those Fantastic Beasts” →