MOVIE REVIEW: Greenland

The trouble is Greenland still cannot resist overselling the unbelievable side of this whole ordeal. The former stunt coordinator director Waugh still needs silly thrills and spills. Rapid societal collapse would be far worse than a smattering of looted stores and some increased traffic here and there. For this movie to go that route, it had to commit more. While shooting for a more grounded perspective, the pitfalls and hurdles placed before Gerard Butler and company try to be harrowing, but they’re still too easy and light on risk. We still have an action hero getting lucky like an action hero too often does. When that happens, the repetitive disbelief smears the good graces of more tense intentions. The eye rolls take over.

2 STARS, 2020, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, StreamingDon ShanahanDecember 17, 2020Greenland, Gerard ButlerComment

MOVIE REVIEW: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

The narrative scope of playwright August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a setting of Black performers sharing their collective experiences in life that now go into their music. There is a precarious pendulum of friendly diatribes and combative challenges between the traveling band members of the titular “Mother of the Blues.” Their forum may be a lowly basement rehearsal room, but the expanse of their descriptive histories reaches generations farther than mere geography.

2020, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEW, Streaming, Video on DemandDon ShanahanDecember 16, 2020Comment

5 Stoner Movies You Need to Watch

When you’re high up in the sky of your couch, any film could practically be a stoner movie. Spongebob marathon? “Eh, look at the yellow submarine. It has legs!” Nothing could be less amusing. Even a 20-hour BBC earth documentary could be worth your while. But the greatest stoner movies give you more than that. It makes you crack up till dawn even when you see it a hundred times. Here are some of the greatest stoner movies you would not want to miss.

2020, Column, Editorial, Home Media, LISTDon ShanahanDecember 15, 2020Comment

MEDIA APPEARANCE: Guest on the "Feelin' Film" podcast for "Contact"

The Feelin’ Film podcast hosted by Aaron White and Patrick Hicks cordially asked me to join in a deep and thoughtful review and conversation of 1997’s monumental Robert Zemeckis film Contact. It’s been a big personal favorite of mine for a long time and one I advertise and endorse heavily in social circles. The three of us muse on the implications and themes that come with the movie’s pendulum of unity and conflict between science and faith. Enjoy!

COLUMN: Life Lessons We Learn From Movies

Books, the World Wide Web and good old fashioned research all provide a number of life lessons, but have you ever considered movies to be a great source of enlightenment? From discovering what it’s like to work for an Editor in Chief at a fashion magazine (The Devil Wears Prada) to what happens when we lose our inhibitions (What Happens in Vegas) to how to game successfully (The Cincinnati Kid), we’ve listed a handful of our favourite movies, all of which we can learn something from...

2020, Column, Editorial, GUEST EDITORIAL, Home Media, LISTDon ShanahanDecember 14, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Wander Darkly

Many existential movies that kick around the questions of life, death, and afterlife dangle the idea of revision. From It’s a Wonderful Life to The Tree of Life, characters alive, dead, or somewhere in-between are presented visions or exercises of how their lives could have been different with wholesale changes or tangential opportunities. Those musings often steer them to accepting their life as it was, pitfalls and all. The new drama Wander Darkly from Tara Miele working the festival circuit goes there not with an eraser, but with a red pen instead. Channeling my school teacher day job, Wander Darkly, in an interesting way, is about proofreading life more than revising it.

MOVIE REVIEW: News of the World

News of the World feeds off those carefully selected extra points of emphasis. You have Tom Hanks in his first western, and playing his true mid-60s age no less, for a change. He portrays a character who speaks with a keen sense of dramatic effect for his listeners. The actor and character occupy a movie that strives well to stay natural with believable aesthetics that are never gaudy. It’s grit without grittiness, and there’s a place for that in the western genre where not everything has to kick like 100-proof frontier whiskey.

2020, 4 STARS, ADVANCE MOVIE REVIEW, Home Media, MOVIE REVIEWDon ShanahanDecember 11, 2020Comment

INFOGRAPHIC: Top 30 Raunchiest Mainstream Movies Revealed

Sex sells! In 2020 alone, searches for “sexy films” have increased by 52% worldwide, proving that even in troubled times, and with less films being made, there’s still an appetite for cheap thrills and torrid trysts. MattressNextDay examined 28,841 films from IMDb containing a range of sex related keywords to find out the top mainstream films containing the most sex related content, how much they’re raking in and how the sex is depicted. Our worldwide results show that sex is prolific and provocative across all genres, even horrors and comedies.

2020, Editorial, GUEST EDITORIAL, Home Media, Infographic, LIST, Social MediaDon ShanahanDecember 11, 2020Comment

INFOGRAPHIC: Guess the Numberplate Quiz

At Peter Vardy, they thought, as the coronavirus has somewhat clamped the handbrake on our year, it was about time that we all had a little bit of fun. That’s why today we bring you a quiz on Movie Number Plates. They’ve selected a series of number plates from the most famous cars in film and brought them together to see how many you can guess correctly. Some are easy but some are extremely tough. If you can correctly identify all of them, we’ll be very impressed! The plates range from films dating back to some of the all-time classics, to the car-focussed thrill rides on the big screen today. We’ve also thrown in a couple tailspins to keep you on your toes too. When you’re ready, give the quiz a go then make sure to send it to all your friends and family to see who's the biggest movie motor buff!

2020, Column, Editorial, Home Media, Infographic, Social Media, SPECIALDon ShanahanDecember 10, 2020Comment

COLUMN: 5 Greatest Movies About Football of All Time

Football is America’s favorite sport. It is no wonder then that there is no shortage of movies about football. While some are forgettable and others best avoided entirely, there are some true cinematic classics out there that can be almost as thrilling as watching your favorite team play live! Any football fan knows that the sport is full of drama and excitement, so it is no surprise that it translates well to the silver screen. This article lists five of the greatest football movies of all time.

2020, Column, Editorial, GUEST EDITORIAL, Home Media, LISTDon ShanahanDecember 10, 2020Comment

EDITORIAL: Is "Casino Royale" the Best Bond Film?

The debate over which of the many great films in the James Bond canon is the best could go on and on for decades. The series has produced some excellent films that balance action and drama around Agent 007 while on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The films have helped define what an action movie can accomplish and set the standard for film franchises that series like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Harry Potter films have tried to emulate, somehow managing to make each movie distinctive and yet fit perfectly into the wider canon. Casino Royale has quickly become a fan favourite and is one of the most financially successful Bond films of any era, but is it the best Bond film? This is what we are going to try and find out.

2020, Column, Editorial, GUEST EDITORIAL, Home Media, SPECIALDon ShanahanDecember 10, 2020Comment

MOVIE REVIEW: Wild Mountain Thyme

Unfortunately, this moment of the borrowed title song getting its proper spotlight is the rustic crest of this movie. Wild Mountain Thyme tries so hard to climb higher. Its romance is constantly saddled with blindness that misses the point of the lyrics. It’s as if the refrain of “will ye go” in the song is stuck by the living embodiment of “s--t or get off the pot” instead. There’s real beauty there, it’s a shame the movie didn’t have it other than the scenery. In the words of one of Ireland’s ancient language, dia ár sábháil!