DrogeMiester's Top 10 WORST Movies of 2015

A few days ago I gave you my list of my top 10 favorite movies of 2015. If you missed that list, I have it linked right there for you to catch up on. Now it's time to do the opposite and give you my least favorite movies of 2015. As a reminder, this is my list. If you liked some of these movies, that's great. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. I didn't want to hate these movies. I always go into a movie hoping to like it, but sometimes that's just not what happens. In the case of these movies, my experience was a disaster. It's also worth noting that, once again, I did not see every movie this year. In fact, when it comes to bad movies there are some that I just had no desire to see. As an example of this, I'll let the cat out of the bag right away. I had no desire to give Fifty Shades of Grey one penny of my money. Does the movie promote rape and sexual abuse? No. Does it look like a really cheap porn flick with horrible characters, acting, dialogue, and story? Yes. So I didn't see it. It's not the only bad movie I skipped. But there were enough atrocities for me to feel comfortable doing this list. So here they are!

10- Taken 3

I'm one of the few people who thought that the fist Taken movie was really dumb. I love Liam Neeson and he's done a lot of great action movies recently, but there's just no intelligence behind this Taken trilogy at all. And they got worse as they went. In this disgraceful third chapter they decided to go the Fugitive route where Liam Neeson was accused of killing his wife and the FBI went on a man hunt to try to find him. And none of it made any sense at all. There was no reason to believe that he actually killed his wife and there was certainly no reason for the FBI to jump to so many conclusions and assume that Liam Neeson was their one and only suspect. Yet that's what happened for most of the movie. I don't blame the actors for this. Liam Neeson and Forest Whitaker tried their best. But there was just nothing to work with as the writing and directing was just so bad. This was just a cash grab. Nothing more. And no one seemed to care about actually making a quality movie. There wasn't even hardly any action sequences that made some people actually like the other Taken movies. They said this was the last one. Let's hope they're true to their word.

9- The Divergent Series: Insurgent

After The Hunger Games was such a big hit, there was some pretty big buzz following Divergent. People told me that the books were good. People said that the story was refreshing and original. Then people said the movie was fantastic! Well I must've been shown a different movie in theaters because the Divergent movie I saw was so dull and boring with no originality whatsoever. It's like the author read The Hungers Games and decided to change the names as well as adding a bunch of things from other successful novels/movies in this genre and make a bunch of money. I guess that worked. Money was made both with the books and the movies, but I personally thought it was a joke. However, it was good enough to barely miss this list last year. I also honestly held the hope that Insurgent would improve on the dull first novel, but holy cow it just got a whole lot worse. I rolled my eyes at Divergent. But Insurgent was actually hard to get through. I love Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Miles Teller as actors. I think they are all talented. But nothing worked for me here. And poor Miles Teller shows up twice on this list, neither of which is his fault. Now are y'all ready for the movie based on first half of the final book this year? I'm not.

8- Pixels

I spent a lot of time defending Adam Sandler and Kevin James leading up to the release of this movie. Both of them have made plenty of good movies in the past, so to me it was silly to hate on a movie solely based on the fact that the two of them were in it. The premise of this movie was genius. Video game characters attacking the Earth? That should've been a lot of fun. And Chris Columbus on as director? That's the guy who gave us Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, and the first two Harry Potter movies. He knows how to make a good movie. Or so I thought. Apparently he forgot because this was horrible. Turns out all the Adam Sandler haters were spot on this time around. This was supposed to be funny. I think I was supposed to laugh. I didn't. Video game characters attacking Earth was supposed to be fun. It wasn't. It was all just stupid. No one was invested in this movie. All of the actors were just there to get a paycheck. The writers apparently didn't even try to make it funny or fun. Instead it was mostly just racist, sexist, and outright stupid. Kevin James as president of the United States was horrible. Adam Sandler and the romance storyline was painful. The fact that him and his buddies were the only ones capable of shooting a freaking gun at these video game characters was a joke. The only reason why this isn't higher up is because the Pacman sequence was kinda fun. But that's literally it.

7- Pan

Every 10 years or so Hollywood decides that it's time to remake Peter Pan again. I don't know why this is the case, but if we have to do this I can at least respect the idea of doing something different. I kinda liked the idea of doing a prequel where we explain how Peter Pan got to Neverland. The idea of Hook being a protagonist to start things off was interesting. We can tell the story of how they became enemies. Add a fantastic cast and a great director and things were looking great! Until the trailers started being released. Uh-oh. I suddenly got really nervous. The trailers were terrible. And turns out that uh-oh was right. We have the dumbest, most cliche orphanage scene to start things off. I just wanted to get to Neverland. But then the journey to Neverland felt like an acid trip and when we got to Neverland they were singing "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Might I remind you that this was set in World War II. That song didn't exist!!! But dumb things like that set the tone for the rest of this movie to the point where if you are a fan of Peter Pan, this movie will be offensive to you because nothing is right. It's all horrible and hard to watch. It baffles me how people like Hugh Jackman and Rooney Mara can read scripts like this and decide that it's a good idea to accept the job. 

6- Terminator: Genisys

Well here's a franchise that should've ended 20 years ago. If you haven't seen the first two Terminator movies, go watch them. They are two of the best action/sci-fi movies ever made. But then the rights went to someone else and then those someone elses decided to continue a franchise that was wrapped up in the most perfect way. In doing so, there were so many continuity errors that it was apparent that for some reason the new people in charge did not care for those first two classics at all. That third Terminator movie was a disaster. The fourth one had nothing to do with anything. And yet we still got a fifth one. And we might even get a sixth one. Stop it! Just stop it! Now to be fair, the initial premise of this movie is interesting. They go back to the events of the first movie and had they stayed there, this could've be a fun movie. But then they jumped into the future and the whole thing became a confusing mess. Time travel is a fun subject that I enjoy. But if you get too carried away, it easily can become a mess, thus you have to tread carefully. The first two were perfect in regards to this. But now the whole franchise is just messed up and now this this franchise has become the textbook example of what NOT to do with time travel in a movie. Personally I choose to pretend that Terminators 3-5 don't exist and I cross my fingers that they will one day just stop.

5- Jupiter Ascending

Hollywood needs more original sci-fi movies. I'm a big proponent of that. We're so carried away in sequels, remakes, and adaptations that we often don't even give original ideas our time and money. Thus Hollywood doesn't make many of them anymore. This is sad. That's why the story behind Jupiter Ascending is heart-breaking. The Wachowski siblings finally gave us another original, big-budgeted sci-fi movie. If this had succeeded, perhaps more original ideas would've followed. BUT IT WAS A DISASTER!!! The opening sequence is really awkward. The setup is stupid. Then the bulk of the movie is a huge, convoluted mess that is the hardest movie to follow. It was as if this was a fourth or fifth movie in a franchise that I was just jumping right into. There's this universe that's setup and we're just expected to know everything about it with little explanation. Not to mention that we have some characters that are half wolf, half human and other characters that are half bee, half human. We also have the weakest lead female who needs to be rescued over and over and over because she is completely helpless. And yet the movie is named after her. To top that all off, Eddie Redmayne followed up his Oscar-winning performance with the absolute worst performance by an actor all year. It made me want to punch the guy in the face and take his Oscar away.

4- Strange Magic

Oh how the mighty have fallen. Yes, I'm talking about George Lucas. In the same year that Star Wars: The Force Awakens became the highest grossing movie ever in the United States, One of Lucas' own passion projects also debuted in theaters. It was called Strange Magic and it was a mess. In fact it was such a mess that it made almost nothing at the box office in the middle of January, meaning you probably never heard of it. No Lucas didn't direct or produce this movie, but it was his story that he had wanted to have made and it was the story of the movie that made absolutely no sense. His defense was that Star Wars was initially intended as a movie for 12-year-old boys and now he wanted to do this little project as a movie intended for 12-year-old girls. Ha. Ha. Ha. I suppose that those intentions are respectable, but I doubt that any 12-year-old girl would even enjoy this movie. I have a hard time even seeing a 6-year-old girl enjoying this movie. Not only is the whole plot a copy of a copy of a copy, but it is so messy and convoluted that it feels like they tried to stuff a whole trilogy worth of plot into 99 minutes. On top of that, it's one of the worst musicals ever. Every single scene they break out into song at all the wrong moments, most of that being current pop music. And yes, if you didn't know, this is an animated movie. One of the worst animated movies I've seen.

3- The Green Inferno

For some reason I felt the need to experience an Eli Roth movie this year. That was a mistake. Have you ever had the desire to watch a human being slowly have all their limbs and other body parts get chopped off and eaten while they are alive followed by watching their head getting cut off and having their whole body served for dinner to this group of cannibals in the wilderness? I didn't think so. This movie is labeled as a horror movie. I wasn't scared. I was disgusted and disturbed. I don't know why a movie like this is passed off as entertainment. Now you can have a violent movie that's done well. Quentin Tarantino has done eight of those. You can also have a horror movie with cannibalistic themes that is actually terrifying. This is neither of those. It's just watching a group of students getting eaten by scavengers in the wilderness and it's disgusting. I don't know why I even watched the whole movie. I guess I just wanted to see how they escaped, but that just made things worse because of the end of the movie is stupid. What the survivors did and said is not what anyone would do or so if they almost just got served for dinner. They would also be a lot more broken mentally. If you are a "gore-hound" and just need to see a gory, violent movie, then I guess this is your thing. But if you want to actually watch a good horror, this is not the movie to see.

2- Jem and the Holograms

I have an idea. Let's take a popular 80's cartoon, completely throw it in the blender, and release it as a live-action film. It worked for Transformers and G.I. Joe. Why not Jem and the Holograms? Even if I were to ignore the fact that this has absolutely nothing to do with the original cartoon (which I'm not going to do -- that's part of the problem), this is still a really dumb movie. A girl records herself singing a random song in her room, her sister secretly uploads it to YouTube, and when she wakes up the next day it has millions of views and suddenly she is as popular as OneDirection. I'm serious. There are so many things wrong with that premise. The biggest problem being that this is aimed at teenage girls and thus is teaching that practice and hard-work aren't necessary to achieve success. This movie is insulting to everyone who actually has worked hard at achieving success on YouTube or as a musician in general. Not to mention that the ensuing attempt at a musical drama is the most pathetic attempt I have seen. Such terrible writing in this. But yes, let's bring back the fact that this is based on the 80's cartoon. They made a horrible movie that has nothing to do with the cartoon and slapped that title on in order to try to make money. Because of that, they've ruined any and all hope for fans of the cartoon to get a properly done movie because no one is going to want to touch this property. That hurts. The only positive thing with this is that the makers of this movie received justice. The movie only made $2.1 million and was pulled from theaters after just two weeks. They didn't even make back their $5 million budget.

1- Fantastic Four

With Fifty Shades of Grey out of the running for my worst movie, this choice was obvious. The production issues for Fant4stic were very well publicized. This doesn't always kill a movie, but in this instance I was left dumbfounded as I sat through the credits. I have never watched a movie where it was so obvious that everyone involved in a project gave up. I'm serious. They. Gave. Up. The first hour of this movie is all setup. It's long and boring, but I can see where the director was coming from. He wanted a more character-oriented movie. But I was so bored that I looked up how long the movie was just to see how much time I had left because it felt like there was another hour or so at least. There was 20 minutes left. I was shocked. Then I witnessed as the second act of the movie was like 10 minutes long and the finale was also only 10 minutes long. They gave up. After not being able to agree on anything, they just slapped an ending on and threw something in theaters. They were more concerned about retaining their rights to the property than giving us a good film. That's despicable. At least with the other movies on this list, it's obvious that an attempt at making a good movie was made and a final product was put in theaters. But because they didn't try with this one, it earns my award for worst movie of 2015. I really hope the talented young cast can recover from this disaster.

DrogeMiester's Top 10 BEST Movies of 2015

We've finished another year in movies and so it's finally time to reveal my top 10 personal favorite movies of the year. A few things to note before we start. First, this is a list of my personal favorite movies. The movies I enjoyed most or the movies that I had a personal connection with. I've been told in lists like this that I'm wrong and that makes no sense. No, I'm not wrong. This is my list. It's biased towards what I liked. Second, I have not seen every movie this year. That's an impossible feat because there are so many that come out each year. But that's okay. It means that there's always more movies to discover from every year and I think it's good to always keep searching those movies out instead of only focusing on the new ones. In the future I probably will find several movies that should've been on this list. No problem with that, right? Finally, while I do enjoy assigning grades to movies, when creating this list I always ignore the grades that I gave. Thus you might find things in an odd order if you pay super close attention to the numbers I give out. Don't let that throw you off. A number is just a number. This is all about comparing the movies to each other, which is something I don't do when giving out an individual grade. So without further ado, let's begin!

10- Shaun the Sheep Movie

Inside Out was deep. The Peanuts Movie was full of nostalgia. Both movies had me laughing hysterically the whole time and both movies almost made me cry. Yet if you know me well enough, you shouldn't be too surprised that my favorite animated movie of the year is in fact Shaun the Sheep Movie. I absolutely love the stop-motion animation genre. These movies deserve to make as much money as the Pixar movies do because of the insane amounts of time and talent that it takes to make just one scene. To make a whole movie? Holy. Fetching. Cow. Yet few people give them the time of day and that's a shame. Concerning Shaun the Sheep Movie, by all accounts this shouldn't have worked. A feature-length movie based on those short little Shaun the Sheep episodes that don't even have actual dialogue? The fact that this does work is mind-blowing. Major creative juices were flowing here because I laughed harder and was more emotional in this movie than the other two animated movies I mentioned. And there was no dialogue. Yet this movie made less than $20 million in the states. Ouch. If you skipped this one, repent now and go rent it. The guys making these movies deserve your money.

9- The Revenant

I waited until this movie expanded to my area to make this list because I had a feeling that this would end up here. And I was right! Alejandro González Iñárritu blew my mind with Birdman last year and he did it again this year. Yes, Leonardo DiCaprio does get mauled by a bear, making this an intense and brutal survival story, but it's not just a survival story. The themes of love, revenge, family, and racism are so strong and beautiful. No one makes the best decisions, yet you can't fault anyone too much for the decisions they make. Not even our antagonist Tom Hardy. Best of all, the cinematography in this movie is some of the best cinematography that I have ever seen. What they accomplished in this movie with 100 percent, pure natural light is absolutely mind-boggling. This just won Best Picture at the Golden Globes. Was that deserving? Eh. I don't know. I'd pick a few others before it, but if this does win Best Picture at the Oscars, I'm not going to be complaining. And speaking of which, give Leo his Oscar already! He should be winning his second or third at this point. Not his first.

8- The Martian

Big budget space movies have been quite the trend recently and I'm not even talking about Star Wars. I'm talking about Gravity, Interstellar, and now The Martian. In terms of the overall cinematic experience, I still think Gravity is the best of the three. However, in terms of story and theme, The Martian easily wins. And please, can we cut it with the "it's not scientifically accurate" argument? None of these three are perfect in those terms, It's like the argument after every single biopic that "that's not how it happened in real life!" You're missing the point. Gravity took me to space and made me feel that I was never making it back to Earth with it's amazing use of 3D. Interstellar was emotional and tragic until the ending got weird and confusing. The Martian taught some amazing life lessons that can be applicable to everyone in any situation. No we're not all going to be stuck on Mars, but all of us are going to be facing our own challenges that seem impossible to overcome. We can either give up and whine and complain our way through life or we can take it one step at a time. You can either focus on trying to get from Mars to Earth (figuratively speaking) or you can focus on figuring out how to get food for the next day. And you can have a sense of humor. Laughter can literally make you live longer. That's not just an expression. That's fact. Medically proven. What a great thing to remember! Thank you Matt Damon and Ridley Scott!

7- Creed

Here we have a seventh movie in a beloved franchise that began in the late 70's. The franchise has had its ups and downs, but in 2015 a new director and team comes on board to essentially reboot the franchise. It's not an actual reboot, but a new beginning with new characters to focus on and follow. To successfully do this, we bring in the old characters we all knew and love as our supporting cast and essentially make the same movie as the original movie just with new characters in those old roles. And it worked! IT WORKED!! Does it matter that Creed and Rocky are like the same exact movie? No! IT DOESN'T! Because every one of these movies in this franchise follows a specific formula and if you try to drastically alter that tried and true formula, you're going to fall flat on your face and no one is going to like your movie. But yet, despite following this formula, Creed still has several things that separate itself. Our main character played by Michael B. Jordan is trying to figure out where he belongs in this world and watching his character progress throughout the movie is beautiful. Helping him out is Rocky himself, whose character in this is a whole lot deeper. Sylvester Stallone gives the performance of his career. This is a beautiful character piece that is topped off with some fantastic fighting sequences that gave me all the feels.

6- Me and Earl and the Dying Girl

A lot of people are talking about Brooklyn right now and for good reason. It's a pretty good movie that is now officially a best picture nominee. But when it comes to movies from Sundance in 2015, I happened to think Me and Earl and the Dying Girl was a better movie. You can look at the title and think that you've already seen the movie. You can read the premise and think it's just The Fault in Our Stars 2.0. You'd be wrong on both accounts. This isn't a romance movie. This isn't another typical teenager in high school movie like The DUFF or Easy A. Even though I liked all three of those movies I just mentioned, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl is a whole lot more. This is the most honest and real movie that I've seen about what it's like for a teenager going through high school while trying to deal with the failing health of a friend that you care about. This was such a raw, emotional movie. I related a lot with our main kid. I thought his friend Earl was the perfect friend. Best of all, I absolutely loved Olivia Cooke from Bates Motel as our dying girl. While I'm happy for Saoirse Ronan for her newest Oscar nomination, Olivia Cooke should've been the one to get that. Why was she not in the conversation? Oh yeah. Because her movie came out in the Summer instead of at the end of the year. Stupid Academy probably forgot this movie existed.

5- The Gift

I watched a lot of Hitchcock movies this year. The man is the master of making a good thriller, which is what my favorite genre of movie is. In watching so many Hitchcock thrillers, I realized that they all follow a formula (once again, following a formula is NOT a bad thing). Three main elements of that formula are as follows: a compelling villain, a satisfying conclusion (usually a good twist), and a realistic and/or relevant story. I won't dive deep into all of those elements, but if you think of the best Hitchcock thrillers (like Psycho and Vertigo), they all nail those three elements. In fact, Hitchcock or no Hitchcock, all the best thrillers follow that formula. And yes, you guessed it. So does The Gift. In fact, I feel that The Gift is a modern Hitchcock thriller. The villain, played by director, writer, and star Joel Edgerton, is deep and complex. You can relate to him and understand why he's doing what he is doing. The movie has several twists and turns that keep you on the edge or your feet as well as a jaw-dropping conclusion. And yes, the themes of bullying in the movie are very relevant in today's society. On top of all that, all the actors, especially Jason Bateman and Joel Edgerton are amazing and the movie is very well crafted in all aspects. What a directorial debut for Joel Edgerton!

4- Ex Machina

Speaking of thrillers, how about the genius sci-fi thriller Ex Machina? A movie that, once again, FOLLOWS A FORMULA! Think about it. What happens in just about every movie that attempts to touch the subject of artificial intelligence? And what happens in Ex Machina? Exactly. I'm not going to spoil it for those who haven't seen the movie, but I am glad I will have a large following for this one because a lot of people have loved Ex Machina. It's shown up in just about every top 10 list that I've seen and I've been on the band wagon from the second I stepped out of the theater back in April. This movie is amazing! It's also one of four movies that I seriously considered putting number one. The fact that I have it at four almost feels like an insult, but instead is more of a compliment to how strong this movie is. The suspense in this movie is insane. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time because I had no idea what was going to happen. The moment I figured it out, I was shocked and stunned. The more I've thought about the events in this movie, the better the movie gets. And how about our trio of phenomenal actors who all gave Oscar-worthy performances? Oscar Isaac, Domnhall Gleeson, and Alicia Vickander are amazing in this movie. I'm now glad that all three have achieved mainstream success. Isaac and Gleeson are in Star Wars (Poe Dameron and General Hux) and Vickander got herself an Oscar nomination. It sadly wasn't for this movie, but at least she got one.

3- Spotlight

Another movie that I'm embarrassed that I have so low. If Spotlight is your favorite movie of the year, then I'm right there with you. I just have four favorite movies. This is literally 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d. Spotlight is just 1c and you'll realize why once you look at the other two ahead of it. Perhaps there is a bit of bias on my part with this movie because my major is journalism and this is a journalism movie. But remember? I can do what I want with my list. Last year I included Kill the Messenger in my top 10, another journalism movie. That one I felt like I was all alone on in defending it. This one I have people on my side. I don't know what the difference is between the two, but whatever. They're both great in my eyes. Kill the Messenger shows that sometimes the journalist is the victim when he or she tries to break an important story. Spotlight shows what can happen when the world decides to listen to a journalist when he or she (or a group of he and she's in this instance) breaks an important story. A journalist can literally change the world and save lives. Apparently there have been thousands, if not millions of children around the world in the last 30-40 years at least that have been victims of sexual molestation in the hands of Catholic Priests. This is the story of the group of journalists that uncovered that scandal. I knew this was a problem, but I didn't know how big of a problem it was until I watched this movie. I'm calling this the most eye-opening and most important movie of the year. Which is why I wanted to put it at the top.

2- Mad Max: Fury Road

Oh what a day! What a lovely day! I loved Mad Max: Fury Road from the second the movie started. I didn't think the rest of the world would love it, too, but I'm kinda glad they did! I mean, 10 Oscar nominations? Are we for real? That almost never happens for a movie like this! But yet, few action movies made are as perfect as Mad Max: Fury Road. Every sequence. Every shot. Every cut. Every scene. It's all perfect. And to think that it was all done with very limited CGI. It was all done by practical effects. The vehicles in this were real. The explosions actually happened. Real stuntmen performed all of the crazy stunts you see that most directors would choose to do all by computer. All of this is edited together so perfectly that the flow is just right. The cinematography is amazing. The visual effects are fantastic. The costumes are great. The makeup and hairstyles are brilliant. The actors are fantastic. The story is perfectly simple, yet the characters are deep and complex. Few action movies in the history of action movies are constructed and executed better. In fact, in celebration of it's huge day with all the Oscar nominations, I re-watched this movie because I now own it. I watch this movie all the time. It makes me happy when I am sad. It entertains me when I am bored. I wanted to put this number one. In fact, I almost just did. But there's another movie that deserves that honor and you know what it is by now.

1- Star Wars: The Force Awakens

That's right. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is my favorite movie of 2015. It's been a long time since a movie that I've been this excited for this rewarding. I promise I'm not just fanboying over Star Wars. I reviewed all six previous Star Wars movies and thus provided an in-depth analysis of why I like Star Wars so much and what I expected from this new movie. And it did exactly what I wanted it to do! Yes, it follows the same formula that A New Hope followed, but as I've been shoving in your face in this post, that's not a bad thing! I'm not going to dive into this any more than I already have, but I will suggest you watch this analyzed review by Chris Stuckmann that I just linked right there. There's so much to praise! The movie is a character piece that dives specifically into both Rey and Kylo Ren. It's their movie. Rey is such a great protagonist. I love everything about her and everything she does. And Kylo Ren is such a deep, troubled villain. I love how broken and conflicted he is. It makes him a better villain. I'm excited to see where the rest of the trilogy takes these two. It was great to see Han, Leia, Chewie, and the gang again, but what's more impressive is how I cared more about our new characters. Not just Rey and Kylo, but also Fin, Poe, BB8 and others.  I love the return to practical effects. I love the sets. I love the visuals. I love the cinematography. I love the John Williams score. I love the action sequences. I just absolutely love this movie! J.J. Abrams and company have successfully made the third best Star Wars movie!

The Revenant Review

It's been a good weekend for The Revenant. After a great run in limited release, it overperformed in it's expansion as it took in $39.8 million, almost besting Star Wars: The Force Awakens' fourth weekend take of $42.4 million. It topped off the weekend by winning three Golden Globes: Best Picture - Drama, Best Actor - Drama, and Best Director. That Best Picture win was especially surprising and impressive. Does that mean director Alejandro Gonazález Iñárritu will make it two years in a row with a Best Picture win at the Oscars or is that Golden Globe win a fluke? We'll find that out on February 28th. As for now, it's time to tell you my personal opinion of the movie. This is actually the final movie from 2015 that I felt needed to see before revealing my top 10 favorite movies of the year. The big reason I wanted to wait for this one is not just because of the good reviews, but Iñárritu's movie from last year, Birdman, was my second favorite movie of 2014. I've been excited for this one since I heard of its existence.

The Revenant is the true story of a group of fur trappers in the early 1800's. There's a ton of fascinating themes and stories that take place throughout the movie, the biggest of which is a survival movie centered on Leonardo DiCaprio. I'm not going to spoil the setup of this movie because I think not knowing that setup will make for a more emotional journey, but I will say that does involve a bear. That part is no secret as I've known about it for about a year now and it's been in just about every trailer and TV spot. Leo gets attacked by a bear. And he doesn't just get attacked by that bear. He gets mauled by that bear. It's a rather terrifying sequence that leads to his group leaving him for dead. Thus we get a man vs. nature survival story that's rather brutal. However, this isn't your typical survival movie where it's just one man trying to survive for most of the movie with a few side characters showing up for a scene or two at the beginning and end. We spend quite a bit of time on several of the side characters, which makes for a very well-rounded, deep movie. But like I said, I'm going to leave most of that a surprise for you to discover on your own.

The best adjective that could be used to describe this movie is breathtaking. Last year Iñárritu did a fascinating thing with Birdman as he combined some really long shots with some magical editing to give the movie the appearance of being done in one shot. This year the fascinating thing he did with The Revenant is shoot the whole movie in natural light, meaning that the only light they used was the natural light of the sun or fires that were lit. Adding to that, most of the movie is shot at dusk or at night. If they didn't get the shot that they wanted, they would just go back and shoot the scene the next day and hope that they get it right. I'm sure this took a lot of patience and persistence, but the final result is some of the best cinematography I've ever seen. I mean, I have no problem with cinematographers creating their own beautiful scenes, but doing things this way and mostly at that time of day means they were able to capture the honest, real beauty of nature. As Iñárritu said in an interview with boxoffice.com, "It's the time of the day when God speaks; you hear the wind in the trees, you feel the cold, you smell the fear."

I like being out in nature. I also like photography. And yes, I really love photography of nature. When I'm out in nature, I make sure to have my camera and I'm usually snapping tons of pictures so that I can get the perfect shot. By no means am I even close to being a professional photographer, which is why I also love looking at pictures and videos from actual professional photographers. This is a beautiful world we live and this movie did a great job of capturing that beauty. Even if the story in this movie was sub-par, I would've come out with a positive feel about the movie with how beautiful the landscapes they capture in this movie are. Yet at the same time, nature is also very brutal and unforgiving at times. Leo's character in this movie is in a very bad situation. We're in the middle of the winter and he's trying to survive on his own after being mauled by a bear. In addition to capturing the beauty of nature, the way in which they shot this movie also made it so they captured the terror of nature. The movie felt very cold. Much of the movie was pretty dim. Thus it felt like you were there with Leo trying to survive. This effected me mentally as I was watching and I actually felt cold, so I put on my coat. No joke with that. Major props to this movie for pulling off what they did.

The cinematography is so good that I said that I would've come out of this movie with a positive feeling even if the story wasn't that great. But that's the thing. The story is really good. The themes in this movie are really fantastic and I love how things turn out. Much of this is propelled by the fantastic acting throughout. Much has been said about Leo's acting performance in this movie and for good reason. Leo is one of the best actors in our age because he completely immerses himself into every one of his roles. Even though he is one of the most recognizable actors, when I watch any of his movies, I see a character and not an actor. For this movie, he wasn't Leo pretending to be stuck in the wilderness on his own. He was Hugh Glass and he was a badly injured man near death in the freezing cold winter. He didn't do a whole lot of talking for several reasons, but he didn't need to talk in order to pull off an amazing performance, which is what he does. In fact, in a very long list of fantastic performances, this performance stands out as one of Leo's best. There's a reason why many people are upset that Leo hasn't won an Oscar yet, especially after five nominations. I really hope this is his year.

Leo isn't the only person to give an amazing performance in this movie, though. There's quite a long list of great performances. I will briefly speak of three. The first is Tom Hardy. Speaking of Oscars, there's a man who's due for a nomination. I hope his name is called this week on nomination morning. Yes, Tom Hardy is pretty talented at portraying characters you can't understand at times and that's the case here again, but his villain in the movie is so fascinating. These are men who really are victims of their context and time. You can't agree with the choices he makes, but you can understand where he's coming from and why he does what he does. As I've stated many times in the last year, those are the best villains. Speaking of a character stuck in a moral dilemma, Will Poulter is a character who wants to make the right decisions and knows Tom Hardy is doing wrong, but is stuck in a terrible spot and is forced to follow Hardy. Finally there is Domnhall Gleeson, who I've loved for a long time. Finally I can use a different reference other than pointing to him being Bill Weasley from Harry Potter to get you to recognize him. It's General Hux from Star Wars! Once again Gleeson gives a very different performance and once again he does great at it.

If you are only a casual movie-goer who only heads out to the theater once or twice a month at most, I do think this is a movie that you should give a shot to. However, if you are a fan of film, specifically the film making process, then this is a must see. Not only is this a great movie with a great story and great themes, but this is a beautifully crafted film. The cinematography is breathtaking. The camera work is fantastic. The use of natural light adds so much to the theme and feel of the movie. The costume designs, makeup, and hairstyles are perfect. The direction of the film is amazing. This is definitely Iñárritu's movie and I love what he does with it. Leo gives his all in this role and is very deserving of an Oscar win. But he's not the only actor who deserves praise. Tom Hardy, Will Poulter, and Domnhall Gleeson all add a very important depth to movie. All of them give what I call Oscar-worthy performances. If I were to pick only one to stand along Leo, I'd go with Hardy, but Gleeson and Poulter deserve to be noticed as well. There's a reason why I waited to see this movie before doing my best movies of 2015 list, because this will probably be on there. My grade for The Revenant is a 9.5/10.

The Hateful Eight Review

Starting in November and going every week up to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, I watched and reviewed every single Star Wars movie. Shortly after the release of The Force Awakens, I began another marathon. A Quentin Tarantino marathon. I didn't review all of those movies like I did with my Star Wars marathon, but I wanted to do this marathon because I hadn't seen all of Tarantino's movies. I saw Pulp Fiction for the first time a year or two back and I was immediately blown away by how amazing that movie was. It immediately became one of my all-time favorite movies. Thus before I went to his new movie, I wanted to watch his other movies since there wasn't too many of them. That's why this review is a bit late. I didn't realize until around Christmas time that the expansion of The Hateful Eight had been pushed up to December 30th. But now my marathon is complete and now it's time to top that off with a review of The Hateful Eight. As it turns out, no movie topped Pulp Fiction, but all eight of his movies are pretty darn good. In fact, they're so good that this gem of a movie in The Hateful Eight is actually his sixth best movie.

The trailers for The Hateful Eight didn't clue me in too much as to what this movie was going to be about, which I mostly appreciated. However, this was one of the few instances where I wanted a little more of an idea of what we were getting into. When I finally heard, not from marketing but from reviews, that this was a Tarantino version of Clue I immediately became intrigued and excited, especially after I dove into more of his movies and realized more of this man's brilliance as a filmmaker. I always love myself a good who-done-it movie. If this was a Tarantino who-done-it movie, I was in. That's kinda what we got. I'll get to more of that in a second. But as far as our premise, we're set in the Civil War time period, just after the war I do believe, and we have a bunch of different characters trapped in a cabin during a blizzard. We have a couple of bounty hunters. One of them has a female victim worth $10,000 that he's planning to get hanged. The other fought for the North in the war. We also have a war general from the South, the new sheriff of the town everyone's heading to, a hang man from that town, and a few other side characters. It's a very fun setup and you know something is about to go down. You just don't know what.

I'm going to do best to tread lightly around things as I talk about this movie because the mystery aspect of it is what makes this a whole lot of fun. I did mention that a who-done-it movie is mostly what we got. What I mean by mostly is that this is not quite the movie I thought it was going to be after I heard others talk about it. In Clue, the premise is that a bunch of different people are gathered in a room and towards the beginning someone dies when no one is looking and everyone spends the rest of the movie trying to solve this mystery of who committed this murder. That doesn't really happen here. Not like I thought it would, anyways. Instead it's more like a group of people stuck in a cabin and the big mystery is who is bad, who is good, and who is going to finally do something that will set up the bloodbath that we know is going to happen. There is a murder mystery somewhere in the plot, but it ends up feeling more shoehorned in than anything and when a reveal does happen, it ends up actually being kinda lame. We also know from the opening credits that more characters are going to be a part of this outside our main eight and most of those characters are useless when they do show up.

I hope this isn't too spoilery for you if you haven't seen this movie. We're three hours long and there's a lot more that happens that I'm not even hinting at, but I do bring up what I do in order to help illustrate that the story of this movie isn't actually that interesting, especially when compared to Tarantino's other movies. Django Unchained was a slavery, Western movie. Inglorious was a re-telling of World War II. Kill Bill was a huge revenge story. Jackie Brown was a hidden love story. This was just a bunch of guys in a room. No real depth to it. Not a whole lot of meaning. The themes aren't nearly as strong as some of his other movies. Splitting this movie into chapters didn't really have a point. Telling this out of chronological order didn't work in this like it usually does in his movies. The ideas were in place for a super interesting movie, but the execution doesn't really work in this like it usually does. There's several elements that are in every Tarantino movie and while all of his movies are good, his best movies are the movies where all of his elements fit together perfectly. This didn't happen with The Hateful Eight.

That said, this isn't a bad movie. It's just a sub-par movie when compared to Tarantino's other work. When you've made so many great movies in your career, there's almost an expectation to put out great movies each time and thus when you make a movie this is good and not great, it's often seen as a disappointment. That's just an unfair part of life, I suppose. When you spend the last 20 years making great and sometimes near-perfect movies, a misstep is a lot more noticeable and easier to criticize. But for now I'm going to be done criticizing. If my negative points are confusing, that's because I'm not letting myself go into details because the aspects that are most worthy of complaining about are in the middle and the end of the movie. As far as the good, the best part of the movie is the characters and the amazing acting performances given by everyone. I was actually really worried about the three hour run time going in, but that wasn't an issue at all because the buildup and character development with all of our characters is perfect. One of the things that Tarantino does best is his dialogue. He can often go huge portions of a movie just with people talking and somehow make it super interesting. That's the case here. Much of the three hour run time was the spoken dialogue between all of the characters and it was all really fascinating.

Part of the reason why all the dialogue was so fascinating was obviously a well-written script that kept you paying attention to every spoken word. The other part is the acting. This is one of the rare instances where I almost don't want to point out anyone because if I point out one person, I have to point out everyone and if I point out everyone, I might get carried away and spend four or five paragraphs just on the different performances. That would be excessive. So I'm just going to give highlights here and not complete thoughts. Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, and Tim Roth are our Tarantino staples and all were amazing, especially Samuel L. Jackson, who gives possibly his best performance yet in a Tarantino movie. Walter Goggins gives an excellent sophomore effort in a Tarantino movie. He was in Django, but wasn't a huge character. This he is. And he almost steals the show as the character who experiences the best and most interesting arc. When push comes to shove, the one who does steal the show is our prisoner girl played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. Holy. Fetching. Cow. That woman was crazy. Bruce Dern I loved. Channing Tatum I actually wish was in the whole movie because he was fantastic in his five minutes of screen time. More people could've been mentioned, but I think that's a good highlight reel of performances.

Moral of the story is that if there are awards shows that give out the awards for best ensemble cast, The Hateful Eight better win hands down. It would in my book that is. Other awards that it should at least get a nomination for include the amazing score and the beautiful cinematography. From the very opening scene I knew that both of those elements would be amazing throughout and they were. The score immediately grabbed me during the opening shot and blew me away the whole time. It was so great that it was one of those scores that I was singing for the rest of the night. And every shot of the movie was so beautifully crafted, especially the shots of them out in the snow. When your goal is to build tension throughout your movie, building up to your big reveal, these two aspects are very important and even though the reveal itself was underwhelming, they did great with the buildup. This is another reason why the three hour run time didn't feel that long. I also wish I was able to see this movie in the 70 mm format that it was shot it. But there were no theaters around me that had that format showing, so I just had to do it as is.

Once again, Tarantino is a master filmmaker. The man really knows how to make a movie. With the large amounts of blood and gore in every one his movies, he's definitely not a filmmaker that will appeal to everyone, but if you are a Tarantino fan, The Hateful Eight is another score for Tarantino that you need to check out. The music and cinematography are practically perfect and that combined with an amazing script with beautiful dialogue make the build-up for this movie very good. It's a long movie, but one that keeps your attention with every move and every line. The mystery surrounding the movie makes it really interesting and fun to follow. However, when we learn what is actually going on, I will admit that the movie as a whole becomes a lot less interesting than it could've been and you realize that the story in this movie is very weak. Thus when compared to Tarantino's other movies, this is no where near as good as several of his other movies. But even with this less than stellar premise, it still manages to be intense and entertaining as you are unsure where everyone's loyalties will lie. It's not going to show up on my list of favorite movies from 2015, but it's still worth checking out if you haven't already. In a bit of a storybook finish to this review, I'm going to give The Hateful Eight, Tarantino's eight film, an 8/10.

Sherlock: The Abominable Bride Review (SPOILERS)

Sherlock is easily one of my favorite shows on TV. In fact, the character of Sherlock Holmes has always been a favorite of mine because I've always enjoyed the mystery/detective books, movies, and TV shows and that's exactly what Sherlock Holmes is. I can't say that I've read or watched everything having to do with Sherlock Holmes, but what I have I've really enjoyed. I first got introduced to the show Sherlock when they were in their second season. The finale of that season was actually the first episode that I watched. Quite the introduction there if you remember what happens in that episode. It didn't take me long at all to catch up with the rest of the series and ever since doing that, I've been in a constant state of waiting. That's the only disadvantage to being a fan of this show. Most of your time is spent waiting for the next season to air. When it finally does, you get through it in the blink of an eye and then it's another 2-3 years of waiting. There's not a new season each year and the seasons that do come only have three episodes each. Granted they're all an hour and half long and thus it's like three movies, but still. I want more.

That's why this Christmas Special was quite the pleasant surprise. I knew it was coming, but I totally forgot about its existence until I was reminded on the day of that it was happening. Instantly my plans for that night changed and I once again dove into Sherlock. As is the case with all of my TV show reviews now, this review will be a spoiler review. I've decided with TV, my target audience is not people waiting to see the show or considering watching the show, it's the people that have already watched. I want to discuss the details of this episode with other fans of Sherlock that have already seen it, because there's a lot that happened here. If you haven't seen this episode yet, it's actually showing in theaters tonight and tomorrow (January 5th and 6th) in certain places if you feel like paying to see it. Otherwise it is re-airing on January 10th I do believe. Or you could probably just find it online somewhere. I'm guessing that PBS or BBC will have it on one of their websites, but that's just a guess. Anywho, watch the episode somehow and then come back and read this review for the episode and let's discuss!

For those reading this paragraph, I'm assuming that you have watched the episode or just don't care about knowing spoilers. So let's dive in! What I immediately loved about this episode was that it initially appeared to be an episode in an alternate universe. What I mean is that one of the great things about Sherlock is that it is set in the modern day, yet it has the tone of and feel of any other Sherlock Holmes story. Well this time the episode was actually set in the late-1800's with our current cast of characters. A lot of the stuff that was going on was the exact way it is in all the old Sherlock Holmes stories. It was classic Sherlock Holmes with the actors that we all love! I didn't know why it was happening, but it was and I was enjoying it. I just assumed that they wanted to do something fun for the Holiday Special to satisfy fans while we all wait impatiently for season 4 to finally air. I was totally down for this. In fact, I didn't need for this to connect at all with season 3 or season 4. Instead I got to thinking how cool it would be if we actually had a full-fledged spin-off series like this.

But it actually did connect and it did so in such a genius way. First to the actual case we are following for much of the episode. The Abominable Bride. Here we have a somewhat basic case in a show like this that we are told by Watson turns out to be one that racks Sherlock's mind like none other. A woman blows her brains out in front of a large enough crowd of people that it seems certain that she is actually dead. The next night she shows up in what appears to be ghost form and kills her husband. But then when everyone goes to the morgue to check this out, she is indeed dead and it's not a fake body. So what's happening? Is it actually a vengeful spirit haunting the town? Because she continues to show up despite her obviously being dead. Do Sherlock and Watson need to call Sam and Dean Winchester (or their ancestors) to burn this lady's bones so that she can stop? Obviously not. Although it appears to be a simple supernatural occurrence, everyone knows that it isn't and we need to figure out she is doing this and why she is doing this.

That's where the meat of this story will come. It's always fun during an episode like this to speculate on how she faked her death, just like it was fun to speculate how Sherlock faked his death at the end of season 2, which we still don't know the answer to. We speculated for two full years only to be teased for the whole third season on how he did it. All we really got was more questions as it appears with the end of the season 3 finale that Moriarty also faked his death. Now it will be a total of five years before we might get an answer to these questions. We did get a few more clues towards the end of this episode, but I'll talk about that in a second. The point is, I was fully invested in this mystery they were solving. They could've just gone on did this story the whole episode without bringing it in and I would've been totally fine, but then crazy things started to happen. Sherlock is mediating in his room when Moriarty shows up and starts taunting him about this case. Then he wakes up. He is back on the plane with Watson, Mary, and Mycroft in the modern day, right where we left off after the season 3 finale.

The whole finale to this is rather wacky, but really genius at the same time. Apparently everything that has been happening in this past is all in Sherlock's head. He's used drugs to send him into this mind simulation so that he can solve a case from 120 years ago that he feels can help him figure out what is going on with Moriarty. I don't know why I didn't make the connection earlier, but suddenly I did. The whole case with the Abominable Bride is parallel to Moriarty's case. This bride blew her brains out and appears to come back and so did Moriarty. By solving this case from, we could get clues as to how Moriarty pulled off what he did. This also dives deep into the character of Sherlock. He's not just a super genius solving cases. He's a human being with serious flaws. He has these drug addictions that are apparently a lot stronger than we initially thought and he justifies the use of these drugs so that he can feel better about himself. We even dove into his thoughts on romance as Watson interrogated him about that. I also got the feel as we kept jumping back and forth through Sherlock's mind that Moriarty has gotten to him real good. Whether or not Moriarty is actually dead, his legacy certainly lives on and if his goal has been to mess Sherlock up mentally, it seems to be working.

After jumping back and forth through time, we finally go back and it appears that we are going to solve this case. The bride faked her death at first. Then she went and killed her husband. After doing this, she kills actually kills herself to throw people off when they identify her dead body at the morgue. Then a secret group of females have been carrying on her legacy to avenge the wrongful things that certain men have done to them. I really enjoyed this specific story. A surprising reveal? No. An interesting one? Yes. But even more interesting is what happens right at the end. Sherlock is about to unmask the lady, certain he knows who he is, when he is shocked to find Moriarty, who is also supposed to dead in this dreamed up timeline as well, although through the classic waterfall death scenario. Pretty soon we are back to the waterfall where we have our second confrontation between Sherlock and Moriarty. The two big sequences we have between Sherlock and Moriarty is definitely the meat of this episode. The constant battle between the two of those is what ultimately holds this whole series together. Yes, the episodes without any sign of Moriarty are still good, but the ones with him are the best. Yes, much praise has to be given to Benedict Cumberbatch for his perfect portrayal of Sherlock, but we can't forget Andrew Scott as Moriarty for being perfect in that role as well.

Speaking of which, I will end this review with touching a bit on the question that has been on our minds since the end of season 3 at the very least, possibly earlier. Is Moriarty dead? We knew the second Sherlock jumped off the building at the end of season 2 that he had faked his death. We don't know exactly how he did it. But we know who helped him and there are ideas. But did Moriarty also fake his death? Sherlock concludes at the end of this episode that he definitely is dead, but he still has plans that will be carried after his death which they have to deal with. After all, he shot his brains out and there's no coming back from that. Do we trust Sherlock? The second he said that, I thought about a few minutes earlier when he described how the bride in this episode also shot her brains, but faked it. I've always kinda felt that Moriarty would come back and that both him and Sherlock faked their deaths, so that's still where I lean. But even if Sherlock is right with what he thinks, I'm equally excited for that to play out. I'm just hoping that we get plenty of Andrew Scott in some form during season 4 and I'm really excited to see where this goes.

In conclusion, I thought this was a very fascinating episode. Because of this series, I'm always excited to see Martin Freeman and/or Benedict Cumberbatch show up in any sort of TV show or movie, which is part of the reason why I'm stoked to see Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange, but I especially am excited when both Freeman and Cumberbatch show up together in Sherlock. This episode snuck up on me, but I was so glad I got to get my Sherlock fix. This was a fun story and it was great to see all these characters in a classic Sherlock Holmes setting. Then as it was revealed what was happening, I really enjoyed how psychological we got. Sherlock was always a fascinating character, but I felt we dove even deeper into his character in this episode and saw a lot of the issues that he has and how troubled he is over the Moriarty situation. Speaking of which, the best part of this episode for me was the return of Andrew Scott as Moriarty. I wasn't expecting him to show up, but it was such a pleasant surprise when he did. Then did again. As a holiday special, this was perfect. This didn't progress the story too much, but it gave us a taste of what is in store for us next year. I just wish season 4 would get here faster.

Room Review

It's almost time for me to reveal my favorite movies of the 2015. Before I do so, there's a few more movies that I need to catch up on. Room was one of the big ones that has been on my list of must see movies for a while now. It's one of those movies that showed up out of nowhere to receive huge praise and now there's talk about it being a contender for best picture at the Oscars. After looking at the trailers, the premise was intriguing and if it's as good as everyone claims it is, it was definitely a must see, even if I knew very little about it. It took a while for me to actually see it because it did a good job of avoiding me by not showing up in the theaters that I wanted it to show up in, but I finally caught it and I'm glad I did because this is a very interesting movie with a lot of themes to reflect. I may not be quite as high on it as some people are, but it's a movie that is well worth your time if you can find it at a place near you.

So what is the premise that I speak of? Well, we aren't told a whole lot to begin with, so I'm going to be walking on glass here, so to speak, as I describe this because I don't want to give too much away. Yet I know that many people reading this may not have even heard of this movie, so I want to give enough to intrigue you. Basically there is a big story going on around us and the movie starts out right in the middle of all the drama. We are in a 10 x 10 room of some sort with a mother and her five-year-old son. Something happened to mother seven years previous where she became trapped in this room by a certain person, causing her to spend many nights crying before she finally turned into a zombie. Then the little boy came from heaven and dropped into the scene and now the two are living together as they are both trapped in this room. You can probably put together the pieces based on what I just said, but that's essentially how the little boy described the situation as it's him that's narrating this story. In fact, it's his movie. Everything we learn and see are essentially from his perspective and that perspective is very limited because his mother has chosen to protect him by not saying anything.

As I reflected on the events of this movie, I got lost in deep thought as I pondered about the world as a whole and my place in it. For five years of his life, this boy is told that this room is all that there is in the world. There is a TV, but he's told everything in it is fake. All there is is outer space around them and the food that they are getting is coming there by magic from this other guy that shows up occasionally. Why is she telling him all of this when it's obviously not true? She's doing it to protect him from the horrible situation that they're in. It would be hard to convince an actual five-year-old boy of all of this if he had seen the outside world. But what if he hadn't? How's he supposed to know any better? Because he doesn't know any better, this is his world and he has fully accepted that. Thus his world is really big and he doesn't take anything for granted. Everything that's in his room is his friend, whether it's something inanimate like a chair or something like a mouse that's actually alive. It's really beautiful to watch and when you do realize what's actually happening, you have a ton of respect for the mother for protecting him in this way. It reminded me a lot of the movie Life is Beautiful wherein the father in that movie told his son that this whole World War II thing is a game in order to protect him from what's actually going on.

I don't want to talk much about the second half of the movie, but I will briefly say that the boy does learn that there is a world around him and his reaction to this is fantastic. Huge props go out to this young kid named Jacob Tremblay for pulling off this performance. Good child actors are hard to come by. I always grade child actors on a different scale than I do adult actors, but this performance by Jacob Tremblay is honestly one of the best performances by a child actor that I have ever seen. I kid you not when I say that. He does such a good job that it doesn't even feel like he's acting at all. It's as if he's living this situation on screen. I believe he's actually eight years old instead of five in real life, but that's just fine because he acts exactly like a five-year-old boy would act if he were in this situation. The first scene where he sees the outside world for the first time is a beautiful scene and his reaction to that is perfect. It's not a moment of wonder and awe for him. It's more of a look of confusion and disbelief as his whole world that he's ever known literally just changed and he doesn't know how to handle it.

Apparently much of the buzz around this film surrounds the performance of Brie Larson as the mother. She's the one that's actually being talked about as winning the best actress award at this year's Oscars. If she does, I'm definitely not going to complain. Her performance is absolutely amazing, especially the scenes she has with her son. That mother/son relationship is one of the best and most believable mother/son relationships on screen that I can think of right now. I just feel like given what she's been through that her character should've been a lot more broken than she is, which is why I personally would give more praise to the son. As I think about it, I should also give a lot of praise to the director or other crew members that worked with this kid to get this performance out of him. I feel there would have to be a lot of behind-the-scenes work in order to get the perfect performance out of him. It seems like there has to have been a whole lot of detailed thoughts going into exactly how they wanted him to react to each individual situation, big or small, because everything was perfect. This is his movie and he carries the whole thing. Which is why I'm really confused as to why the nominations he is getting are in supporting actor. Are they just too afraid to give an eight-year-old a best actor nomination? He's not in a supporting role. He's in the lead role. This is his movie. But oh well. Whatever.

As far as my biggest complaint for the movie, it has to do with the question of what genre the movie is. I'm going to dance around this a lot because I don't want things to be spoiled. We got partway into it when I wondered if this was a crime drama or a thriller. It kinda set itself up like that, but in the end it wasn't. As such, there are certain things about the actual story and situation that didn't seem super believable to me. Specifically, there is a chain of events that's the transition from the first half to the second half and if this situation were to play out in real life, I have a feeling that the events would be significantly different and thus it had me slightly disappointed. I think I would've liked this movie a lot more if it actually was a thriller, but instead it was just a character drama about a little boy's discovery of the world around him and the relationship he has with his mother. I don't want to knock it down too much because as is, it's a pretty darn good character drama with a beautiful mother/son relationship. Specifically there's a moment of dialogue at the end between the mother and the son that really got me. I'm not going to spoil it, but you should know it when it comes.

Overall, if Room comes to a theater near you, definitely go see it. There's a good chance that after we hear the Oscar nominations later this month that the movie will expand a bit as to satisfy the curiosity of those who are wondering what in the heck this Room movie is that just got all these nominations. It's a very beautiful movie with some powerful messages centering around the story of a boy who is discovering the real world for the very first time. It's a movie that will cause you to stop and reflect on life and your place in it. If you can believe, I did a lot of holding back when I discussed the specifics because there is a whole lot that can be discussed on this movie that I would rather you discover for yourself. This movie is the tale of two halves and I've spent most of the movie discussing the first half. Even then, there's a lot in the first half that I will also let you discover on your own. The transition between the two halves I found a bit rough, which is the main reason that I don't think I enjoyed this quite as much as some others have as this could be our best picture winner. But nonetheless, I give Room a 9/10.

Movie Preview: January 2016

Thanks mostly to the huge success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, December was able to push 2015 over the hump to being the highest grossing year in movies yet with $11.1 billion, barely topping 2013's previous record of $10.9 billion. In terms of the number of total tickets sold, 2015 didn't even come close to 2002's record. In fact, it's all the way down in 18th place on that list when looking at a time period from 1980 - 2015, which speaks a lot to how much the price of a ticket has inflated in the last 35 years and beyond. But nevertheless, getting the former record is still impressive. The year 2016 will look to build on this success as there's a lot of big movies on schedule for this year. I talked about a lot of them in my yearly preview, so check that out if you haven't already. Now is the time to look specifically at the month of January, which will mainly be a game of which January release can dethrone Star Wars from that top spot. Avatar ended up ruling for seven weeks before it was dethroned by Dear John at the beginning of February. Can Star Wars last that long? We shall see!

January 1st - 3rd-

At this time last month, there were no movies scheduled for a wide release this weekend, so I felt comfortable waiting to talk about The Hateful Eight, which was supposed to wait till January 8th to expand nationwide. Well, they made nearly a last minute decision to expand the movie on December 30th instead, which means I should've brought it up last month. But oh well. Can't change that now. The Hateful Eight is cleverly titled as it's Quentin Tarantino's eighth directorial effort. That of course is if you only count his feature length directing efforts where he was the only one directing. It also assumes that you count Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 as one movie. Semantics aside, The Hateful Eight is a murder mystery movie like that of Clue. A group of people are trapped in one room and they need to figure out who is the one who committed a certain murder. Added to this premise are Tarantino's trademark bloody violence and foul language, which have made this a very unique experience for many. The reviews are generally favorable, although not quite as high as some of Tarantino's previous efforts.

I will mention one very intriguing platform release from this weekend and that is Anamolisa. I'm sure this is bound to expand nationwide at some point, but I have no idea when that is, so I'm talking about it now. If you've never heard of this, this is a stop motion animated movie that's receiving very high praise from critics right now. In fact, it's looking like the one animated movie that has the power to steal away the best animated feature award from Pixar's Inside Out at this year's Academy Awards. A movie to take your kids to when it expands? Nope! This is an animated movie made strictly for adults as it carries an R-rating with it. And it's not a raunchy comedy like South Park either, which makes this a very unique movie. It's a drama starring the voices of David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh about a man who is stuck living a very mundane life. Yet things are about to change for him when he meets someone important. The director here is Charlie Kaufman, who is best known for his writing/producing work for movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich.

January 8th - 10th-

Nothing is going to stop Star Wars this weekend unless The Revanant can surprise big time by earning around $50-$60 million, which is where Star Wars will be at. The Revenant is more than likely only going to get half of that, which is just fine. The hype here is mainly surrounding Leonardo DiCaprio's performance as a man in a fight with nature. This is the true story of a trapper in the 1800's, played by Leo, who was mauled by a bear and left for dead. It's a brutal story of survival showing how unmerciful nature can be at times. The movie was also shot in natural lighting in order to capture the feel of realistically being out in the wild. The director here is Alejandro González Iñárritu, who just barely took home the best picture Oscar last year for Birdman. The question here isn't if Iñárritu can go back to back with best picture. The Revenant seems to be out of the discussion as far as that goes. The real question is can Leo finally win his best actor award being nominated five times now without a win. Things are looking good for Leo, but you never know with Oscar.

There always seems to be a new horror film released at the beginning of January and this year it's The Forest. There's actually a good reason that this keeps happening and that's because horror movies have had a pretty good track record in January. Each of the past four years has seen at least one horror open to $15 million or more. A few of these have come out of nowhere to earn big money for a January release, yet none of them have been very well liked, so it doesn't appear that quality is that important in order for these movies to make a bit of money. So The Forest has history in its favor. It's also kinda based on a true story in that apparently there is a place in Japan called suicide forest where people go to commit suicide every year. But here's the thing. Do people know this movie is coming out? It's not a part of a franchise. It doesn't have any recognizable cast or crew. The advertising hasn't been very strong. You can't just make a horror movie, throw in some horror cliches, give it a generic title, and hope that people show up.

Another smaller January release that probably fly under the radar is The Masked Saint. This is a faith-based movie distributed by Freestyle Releasing, who has a lot of success the other year with the movie God's Not Dead. However, for every huge faith-based movie like God's Not Dead, there's a lot more smaller releases that simply grab a few million is all. This one seems like the latter. It does its best to go outside the box as its about a wrestler who is also a father and pastor who is trying to be a hero in his community. It's also based on a true story. So there's going to be a handful of people that will be interested in this, but I don't anticipate it breaking out.

January 15th - 18th-

The movie most likely to dethrone Star Wars this month is Ride Along 2 on Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. Two years ago, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart teamed up in the buddy comedy Ride Along and that proved to be box office gold as it earned $41 million in its opening weekend, scoring the January opening weekend record at the time (which was shattered last year later by American Sniper). Following that, Kevin Hart has gone on to star in several successful comedies and Ice Cube's personal story was put on center stage in last year's huge hit Straight Outta Compton, which could receive a few big Oscar nominations shortly before the release of Ride Along 2. All signs point to this improving on that $41 million dollar opening of the first. The question is how big will Star Wars be in its fifth weekend? Avatar's record fifth weekend was $42 million. Based on current trajectories, Star Wars should be around $30-$45 million, depending on how well it hold in the holiday weekend. Unless Ride Along 2 is a huge disappointment, it should top that number.

The past two years have both had a war drama do well in January. Two years ago was Lone Survivor. Last year was American Sniper. This January there are two of these movies that will each hope to replicated this success. The first is Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. It's been a while since the phrase "directed by Michael Bay" has excited movie fans. Although Michael Bay is usually the one with the last laugh as is shown by his Transformers movies, which have combined for a worldwide total of $3.8 billion. As far as 13 Hours goes, it remains to be seen if audiences are interested in this specific subject matter. Lone Survivor and American Sniper were both fairly recent, but this is even more recent as it's a movie about events from less than four years ago when a U.S. compound was attacked in Benghazi, Libya. It does seem like Michael Bay is trying to go back to his roots with this as he started his career off with a string of successful R-rated movies that was followed by 2001's Pearl Harbor, another war drama. Is this the movie that gets fans on his side again?

Finally, this weekend will see the release of Norm of the North, which has a good chance of getting completely ignored. This is an animated movie that's not from a major animation studio that is about a polar bear travelling to New York to try to save his home. Family movies have done well in January recently. Two years ago, The Nut Job was a pretty big surprise on this same weekend despite having poor reviews and not being attached to a major animation studio. Last year Paddington did very well, although that was initially supposed to be a Christmas release. Advertising for Norm of the North has been pretty aggressive, but reactions to the trailers have been pretty bad. If kids enjoy it, then none of that matters. However, there's another reason to believe that that this will be passed over and that is the upcoming release of Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda 3 at the end of the month. It seems likely that parents will save their money and take their kids to Kung Fu Panda 3 instead of Norm of the North.

January 22nd - 24th-

If Star Wars takes the crown at the Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, there's a good chance it'll take this weekend as well as the three new releases here seem like typical January affair that most people ignore. If Ride Along 2 takes the weekend, then there's also a chance that Star Wars goes back to the top as Ride Along 2 will most likely be very front-loaded. The new release with the most potential this weekend is The 5th Wave. Following the huge successes of franchises like Twilight and The Hunger Games, Hollywood has been aggressive in searching for the next big young adult series to adapt to the big screen. Successes have been found recently with the likes of Divergent and The Maze Runner, but The 5th Wave looks to be another miss like that of The Host, Mortal Instruments, or The Giver. Chloe Grace Moretz is our main star in this and although she seems to be committed to the role as she says she's read the book several times, the book series doesn't seem to have a huge following behind it and it doesn't appear that casual audiences are too excited to see this alien invasion series.

In 2013, Johnny Knoxville and his crew entertained audiences with Bad Grandpa, a movie about a dirty, foul-mouthed grandpa (played by Johnny Knoxville) hanging out with his grandson doing funny pranks. This weekend, the completely unrelated Dirty Grandpa hits theaters with essentially the same exact premise and a nearly identical title. This time around Zac Efron is the grandson and he drives his Grandpa, played by Robert De Niro, to Florida for spring break. And yes, his grandpa is a dirty and foul-mouthed grandpa. The premise is one that has obviously worked in the past and the cast here is pretty good, but will people avoid it because it looks too much like a rip-off of Bad Grandpa? Comedies can work in January, but if they are met with poor reviews, they do have a history of going the way of last year's Mortdecai, which debuted on this weekend last year and failed to even hit $10 million in its entire run.

The third release of the weekend is another thriller from STX Entertainment called The Boy. STX is a newer production company formed with the idea of producing 8-10 medium-budgeted, star-driven films per year. Their first two movies came towards the end of last year with two very different results. The Gift was a thriller written and directed by Joel Edgerton that was praised by critics and made a very healthy $40 million. Secret in their Eyes was a remake of a foreign thriller from just a few years ago and despite a huge cast, it was panned and only made half as much as The Gift. The Boy will hope to follow the success of The Gift rather than Secret in their Eyes, but a January release with a premise that looks fairly unoriginal could mean it could go either way. Not all of STX's movies are planned thrillers, but these first three are, although The Boy is more of a psychological horror thriller instead of a straight-up thriller and is about a woman who takes a job as a nanny and quickly learns that the family's 8-year-old boy is a life-size doll wherein you have to follow strict rules or bad things happen.

January 29th - 31st

If Star Wars has lasted this long as the king of the box office, this weekend will definitely be the weekend where it doesn't come on top with the release of Kung Fu Panda 3. DreamWorks has had a lot of struggles in the last few years as they got a little carried away with the idea quantity over quality. While Pixar has mostly done just one movie per year, DreamWorks started to do at least two or three. In 2012, Rise of the Guardians started a bad streak for them where most of their films underperformed. This sparked a whole ton of internal changes and several films were axed or postponed. Now their current plan is to slow things down a bit. For the next few years, they will have just one original movie and one sequel. All this is why Home was their only movie last year and the success of that film most likely gave the studio a big sigh of relief. Now they hope to start a streak of success with the third movie of their Kung Fu Panda franchise. Kung Fu Panda 3 sees Po reunited with his father, which was teased at the end of Kung Fu Panda 2. The whole gang of voice actors is back again for this sequel while Bryan Cranston, Kate Hudson, and J.K. Simmons join the party as well.

I mentioned earlier that there are two war dramas this January. The first one was 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. If that one doesn't work out, Disney's The Finest Hours will hope to pick up the slack. Neither movie is expected to do huge business, but yet neither were Lone Survivor or American Sniper, so it wouldn't be surprising if one of the two broke out. The Finest Hours has perhaps the more user-friendly premise. Not only is it a lighter PG-13, but it's also the true story of events that took place back in the 1950's instead of just under four years ago. Disney has been advertising this movie as the most dangerous rescue mission in U.S. Coast Guard history as four members of the Coast Guard set out to rescue nearly more than 30 stranded sailors following one of the worst storms ever to hit the New England. Starring in the film are Chris Pine, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, and Eric Bana. Directing the movie is Craig Gillepsie, the director of Disney's 2014 film Million Dollar Arm.

Last year saw the release of the widely hated, yet extremely lucrative film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. Because of this success, the whole trilogy will be adapted to film. The sequel is titled Fifty Shades Darker and will be released next year. In the mean time, Marlon Wayans has decided to move forward with a parody of the film called Fifty Shades of Black. They Wayans were once very popular comedic actors and filmmakers as they were responsible for the success of the first two Scary Movie films as well as other films such as White Chicks. However, they seem to have lost their touch recently as it's been a decade or so since any of the Wayans have done something that people have enjoyed. The most recent two films were the Haunted House movies, which weren't received nearly as well as the first two Scary Movie films. Marlon Wayans has written and stars in this newest parody film Fifty Shades of Black while the director of both Haunted House films is on board directing. While this probably won't be hated as much as Fifty Shades of Grey was, chances of it being well-received seems slim.

Speaking of Star Wars, the final film of January is called Jane Got a Gun and is set in an alternate universe of Star Wars where Obi-Wan has turned to the dark side and Padme has teamed up with Owen Lars to rescue her daughter Leia. No, I lied. That's not true. However, it is a reunion of sorts that stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, and Joel Edgerton, who played the aforementioned characters in the Star Wars prequels. The movie is another attempt to revive the Western genre, which was really popular back in the day but hasn't been popular in quite some time. Even the most well-liked modern Westerns such as the remake of True Grit seem to have a ceiling as far as how much they can earn. Natalie Portman plays our main character of Jane who when her husband, played by Ewan McGregor, comes home riddled with bullets is forced to go to her ex-husband, played by Joel Edgerton, in order to help save her family. The advertising for this hasn't done a great job at selling the movie, so the potential to break-out in a bit of a crowded market seems pretty slim.