I'm calling in the big guns for this latest "Guest Critic" entry. The man you will read tonight is full-fledged fellow film critic with his own podcast. Fancy pants! Meet Blaine Grimes, a new Oklahoma resident by way of Texas. I became social media acquaintances through another Texan, friend of the page and all-round critic himself, Tim Day of "Day at the Movies." We have enjoyed following each other's work and pestering Tim Day every since.
Read MoreAs busy I get from time to time, I find that I can't see every movie under the sun, leaving my friends and colleagues to fill in the blanks for me. As poetically as I think I wax about movies on this website as a wannabe critic, there are other experts out there. Sometimes, it inspires me to see the movie too and get back to being my circle's go-to movie guy. Sometimes, they save me $9 and you 800+ words of blathering. My latest "Guest Critic" is a high school classmate of mine, Kelly Meents.
Read MoreThe 88th Academy Award nominations will be announced tomorrow morning, January 14, 2016, hot off of the weekend's 73rd Golden Globe awards. I've been following the full awards season over on my Awards Tracker page. Using that data as the tea leaves and a truckload of hunches, I'm going to attempt to closely predict the Oscar nominations for the "Big 8" categories for the third year in a row.
Read MoreMore and more each year, the Golden Globes have become more an a popularity contest than a true precursor to the Academy Awards. What you're watching on TV is a party thrown by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and hosted by Ricky Gervais in an effort to be loved and share some love. To its credit, the awards show still garners legitimate attention and ratings. The winners do get a pretty positive rub and the marketers gain a few more "Winner of..." graphics to put in the newspapers next to their films.
Read MoreTom Hooper's new film, "The Danish Girl" based on the fictionalized account of Lili Elbe, spearheads what has been a banner 2015 year for LGBT film subjects. This a film not about a character looking for love. All that person wants is to be the truest version of themselves on the inside in a time where what that means on the outside would not be accepted publicly. The philosophy of it all brings us back to Ralph Waldo Emerson when he said, "What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you." "The Danish Girl" delivers a story that matches the matter of Emerson's thoughts on the past, future, and inside.
Read More"Jupiter Ascending" is an utter mess of missed opportunity and misguided world-building. Just as with a majority of science fiction movies, the visual panache is present in astounding detail. That, once again, is the easy part. Unfortunately, none of it (and I mean none of it), is created with purpose or direction that becomes compelling and stirring to you as the audience. None of its creative ingredients work to earn your investment, acceptance, attention, or even your basic comprehension.
Read MoreMore and more each year, the Golden Globes have become more an a popularity contest than a true precursor to the Academy Awards. What you're watching on TV is a party thrown by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association in an effort to be loved and share some love. To its credit, the awards show still garners legitimate attention and ratings. The winners do get a pretty positive rub and the marketers gain a few more "Winner of..." graphics to put in the newspapers next to their films. Let's take a look at the film categories and pick some winners.
Read More"The Theory of Everything" elected for the safe side of risk as a biographical film. Adapted from "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen," the memoirs of Jane Wilde Hawking, the first wife of renowned theoretical physicist Dr. Stephen Hawking, by New Zealand playwright Anthony McCarten, the film is the second feature effort from Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker James Marsh ("Man on Wire"). To its credit, "The Theory of Everything" takes decidedly different route than one would expect from a documentarian telling the life story of a world-famous scientist.
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