Movie Review: Chappie

Neill Blomkamp has returned with his third feature, and hoping for a return to form. He burst onto the scene in 2009 with District 9. It came out of nowhere and gave us a great science fiction film. From there he gave us 2013's Elysium, which is not well thought of. I liked it when I first saw it, but it really is something of a mixed bag, even Blomkamp has recently come out and apologized for the missteps. I went in to Chappie hoping that it would be a return to form, something to start building faith for his recently announced Alien project. What I found was not great, but not terrible either.

Movie Review: X-Men: Days of Future Past

It is rare, at least in my experience, to see a franchise really begin to catch its stride this far in to its run. It is especially rare when you consider that said franchise did not start out all that bad, in my estimation. In fact, I thought they did a really good job with the first couple of films. 2000's X-Men and 2003's X2 were both pretty strong adaptations. Definitely not exactly like the books, but they did a good job of keeping true to the source while adjusting to the movie format. Then there was a steep stumble with X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Movie Review: Prisoners

With his first English language film, Oscar nominated director Denis Villeneuve (Best Foreign Language Film for Incendies) has delivered a finely crafted, intensely atmospheric, and frighteningly believable thriller. It is a movie that feels as if it were ripped right from the headlines, albeit with a dose of movie magic to amp things up to near the breaking point. This, to me, is rather impressive as the trailers, while intriguing, did not cry out as a must see. If you then factor in the two and half hour run time, I found myself questioning if it could possibly be worth it.

Movie Review: The Wolverine

There was a time when the prospect of a Wolverine movie really excited me, but after three X-Men movies with Wolverine as a central character and the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie, well, let's say that our wild man was close to overstaying his welcome. I had a suspicion we may have seen the last of the clawed anti-hero. Then word came down that Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler, The Fountain) was coming on to helm the follow up. That got my attention and hope for a strong film returned, and then dashed when he dropped off the project.