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(04/17/17 3:13am)
Power Rangers, based off the nineties live action cartoon, is the origin story of the mighty morphers and likely the first installment in a cinematic franchise. It tells the story of how a group of misfit teenagers came to don their respective suits and fight some crazy alien lady that wants some crystals for, like, power and world domination or something. It also sucks. And it’s boring, lame and lame. But unlike most terrible movies, it’s not even fun to trash because it was just 90 minutes of coma-inducing exposition followed by twenty minutes of Transformers-esque ‘splosions and destruction. Aside from the hilariously blatant product placement, there really weren’t any laughs to be had — Power Rangers is stuck in that awkward middle ground between mediocre and awful, too competent to laugh at and too poorly made to be genuinely entertaining.
(04/03/17 12:19am)
Life, directed by Daniel Espinosa, whose work consists mostly of star-studded lowbrow action flicks, is not a particularly original or inventive film. And for a movie about intelligent extraterrestrial life, it’s not exactly clever in either its story or the way it presents it. One could say it’s pretty much a direct ripoff of Alien, with some inspiration from Gravity thrown in for good measure. Yet, in spite of all this, I still enjoyed the heck out of it. Pointless trips down memory lane work when they’re well done — and Life, for all its flaws, captures the dreadful essence of pure grotesque horror, complete with a few darn good performances from its cast and some great visuals and sound design. Just don’t think about it too much.
(03/23/17 10:37pm)
Beauty and the Beast, directed by Bill Condon and with a screenplay penned by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, is a very by-the-book and straightforward remake of the 1991 animated Disney classic. The film does not take any needless risks in its interpretation of the original, and consequently, its appeal to viewers is based almost solely on the nostalgia factor and the natural charm and likability of its lead, played by Emma Watson. Being that I have no childhood attachment to the animated movie and find Watson to be overrated, I found myself frequently bored and, quite frankly, more than a little freaked out by the CGI-powered talking wardrobe. That is not to say the film is anything remotely resembling a failure — on the contrary, it does a fine job in paying homage to the original and has received high praise from audiences (sporting a solid 7.9 on IMDb) — it was just made with a very specific demographic of Disney-loving millennials in mind.
(03/20/17 12:05am)
There was a moment, a little more than halfway through Logan — the X-Men franchise's emotional send-off for Hugh Jackman, who has played the role of Wolverine since 2000 — when it occurred to me that this is more than the standard superhero fare that Marvel has spent the last decade perfecting and turning into a several billion dollar industry. It wasn’t during one of the movie’s incredibly tense action sequences, nor was it even at a critical moment in the plot; on the contrary, it was a simple and seemingly nondescript dinner scene between Logan, Charles Xavier, Laura (the young girl featured in the trailers) and a family that offered to let the three stay in their home for the night during their journey north to the Canadian border. Logan, anxious to get the girl north as quickly as possible with an army hot on their trail trying to stop them, is of course, reluctant to accept their offer of food and shelter, but Xavier pleads for the three of them to slow down and enjoy the peaceful company of the family. The dinner sequence itself is devoid of action or any grand emotional apex — it was just a wonderful and poignant moment of characterization, to remind you that regardless of their title of ‘mutant,’ these three at the center of the film are actual people, rather than just merciless killin’ machines. That is not to say that the film does not indulge in the excessive spectacle of violence that has come to define the comic book movie industry, as it is bloodier than any in the genre, save for perhaps Deadpool. But, in taking time in the midst of the intense plot for a scene of quiet character building, Logan proved itself as having ambitions that go beyond raking in nine-digit numbers at the box office.
(03/02/17 2:02am)
Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele (best known for his work on the comedy sketch show, Key & Peele), is a horror-comedy film starring Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams and numerous other recognizable names and faces. Built largely around its keen and often uncomfortable sense of racial awareness, the movie follows Chris Washington (Kaluuya) who, at the request of his white girlfriend Rose Armitage (Williams), goes with her to visit her rich parents at their secluded family estate. Over the course of their stay at the house, the racially out-of-touch nature of the parents and their affluent old white friends becomes increasingly strange and bothersome to the point where Chris begins to wonder whether their intentions are as wholesome as he’d been led to believe (hint: they’re not).
(02/17/17 12:17am)
In this week’s edition of “Movie reviews by Richard Morris that no one really reads or cares about,” I’ve decided to take a brief hiatus from the endless biopics, PG-13 horror flicks and obvious Oscar bait and have elected to go in a new, bold direction. So hold onto your hats, folks, cause this review’s gonna be a real doozy. And no, it’s not Fifty Shades Darker — I’d sooner impale myself on the end of a well-crafted, sturdy wooden spear than fund the literately-challenged exploits of E.L. James, a certified dunderhead whose fame and fortune took less effort than even the most complacent of the Kardashian sisters.
(02/13/17 1:54am)
Jackie, a movie directed by famed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain, is a biopic that follows the life of First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the immediate aftermath of the President’s assassination in 1963. Kennedy, who is played by Natalie Portman, over the course of the film struggles to come to terms with her own faith in the wake of her husband’s sudden death, as well as the legacy he left behind as both a man and a politician.
(02/02/17 11:22pm)
Following in the steps of 2010’s The Social Network and a couple subsequent Steve Jobs knockoffs, The Founder — directed by John Lee Hancock, written by Robert D. Siegel, and starring Michael Keaton — is the latest biopic to attempt to successfully capture the ‘a-holish’ nature of a famous and powerful American capitalist. In this latest stab at the subgenre, Hancock and Siegel look at the rise of McDonald’s from a popular local restaurant in San Bernardino, California, to the nationally-known burger chain that it quickly became thanks to the hard work and vision of the McDonald brothers, combined with the determination and cutthroat capitalist maneuverings of Ray Kroc.
(01/27/17 12:42am)
Split, the latest installment in the volatile career of writer and director M. Night Shyamalan, is a horror-thriller that opens with the kidnapping of Casey Cooke (Anya Taylor-Joy) and two other bland and stupid girls. The crime is committed by a mentally-unstable man (James McAvoy) who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities). From there, the film follows the subsequent imprisonment of the girls, as the man — whose name varies based on his personality — has his mental state severely deteriorate despite the best efforts of his psychiatrist, Dr. Fletcher (Betty Buckley). Some crazy, borderline supernatural stuff happens, there are a couple solid twists and turns, and then the movie ends — huh, and it actually wasn’t half bad.
(01/18/17 11:00pm)
It was, uh, bad.
(01/10/17 11:05pm)
La La Land, the third feature film by writer and director Damien Chazelle (Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Whiplash) is something of a throwback film, a musical romance which harkens back to the golden days of the genre in the mid-20th century. The story follows Seb (Ryan Gosling), a classical jazz pianist whose undying commitment to jazz’s traditional roots leaves him unable to hold a steady job, and Mia (Emma Stone), a struggling young actress with aspirations that go far beyond her job as a barista on the Warner Bros. Their romance is a significant driving point in the first half of the movie, but as the plot progresses forward the focus shifts more toward the two as individual characters as they struggle with the conflict caused by their fading dreams in the rigorous and unforgiving entertainment industry.
(12/01/16 10:37pm)
Moonlight, much like its misunderstood central character Chiron, is incredibly easy to label. It is, at least according to the critics that seem to define the conversation surrounding it, a film about homosexuality and the pressures of masculinity; it's a portrait of black identity in a country whose mainstream culture is entirely whitewashed; it's a universal tragedy, a life-changing motion picture of tremendous emotional depth; it's a bold and fierce rejection of the rigid standards of an industry that has helped create harmful cultural stereotypes as much as it has benefitted financially off of them.
(11/18/16 12:54am)
High concept, high budget science-fiction films are, at best, a hit-and-miss genre. For every work of creative ingenuity like Interstellar or The Martian, there are at least a few major disappointments, ranging anywhere from decently mediocre (Elysium) to the pretty darn bad (The Matrix sequels) to the downright awful (After Earth). While the genre at its best can be a dazzling and incredibly imaginative experience, it can quickly devolve into a generic and uninspired mess that relies purely on CGI in a fleeting attempt to retain viewers’ attention.
(11/07/16 11:10pm)
The Big Lebowski, which airs Thursday, is the final installment of a special eight-week cult classics series at The Athena Cinema. Each movie will run on Thursdays at 7 p.m. For a full schedule, click here.
(11/04/16 12:09am)
Separate from the review itself, I would quickly like to address one of the worst taglines of any film in recent memory.
(11/01/16 12:24am)
Wayne's World, which airs Thursday, is the sixth installment of a special eight-week cult classics series at The Athena Cinema. Each movie will run on Thursdays at 7 p.m. For a full schedule, click here.
(10/27/16 10:28pm)
Here’s what you need to know for Thursday, Oct. 27, 2016:
(10/21/16 10:00am)
Starting on Thursday and running through Saturday night, the Lost Flamingo Theatre Company is bringing a live-action rendition of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Athens.
(10/21/16 12:43am)
David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water is, at the surface, a simple movie with simple tastes, much like the characters and world at the heart of its narrative. Taking place in the present-day final wild frontier of the U.S., rural west Texas, it’s a story of a pair of bank robbers and the two law enforcers responsible for catching them. But underneath the basic premise, the film — dare I say, one of the top two or three pictures of the year — is deceptively profound, an honest and thoughtful portrayal of the small town American struggle that dates back to the origins of American literature, echoing the sentiments put forth by Steinbeck and Faulkner nearly a century prior.
(10/18/16 12:21am)
Edward Scissorhands, which airs Thursday, is the fifth installment of a special eight-week cult classics series at The Athena Cinema. Each movie will run on Thursdays at 7 p.m. For a full schedule, click here.