Another based-on-a-book, and this one I’ve actually read. Before I Go to Sleep came out a couple years ago, got some hype. Personally I thought the book was just ok, and the film kept pretty close to the original material, so it too was just ok.

The movie stars Nicole Kidman as Christine, a Memento-style amnesiac who can’t make short term memories, due to an attack several years ago. She is cared for by her husband Ben, played by Colin Firth. Every morning she wakes up not knowing who he is, and he explains to her what has happened before going to work and leaving her home alone. What he doesn’t know, is she is seeing a doctor while he is away. Her doctor calls every morning after Ben has left, telling her where to find a video diary she has been keeping (and hiding from Ben) to catch herself up on what they’ve been working on, an attempt to recover past memories. As the movie plays out, you see Ben has been hiding certain things from her, though the extant and reasoning is left unclear till the end.

As psychological thrillers go, it isn’t terrible, but it does resort to cliché gimmicks and over-the-top jump scares. The acting by Firth and Kidman is good, but the story has some holes and certain plot elements are rushed and not explored as much as you’d like. Whereas my previous movie Dear White People is the kind that critics love and average movie-goers might not, Before I Go to Sleep feels like the opposite, one that will be panned by the former group and mostly enjoyed by the latter.

Full disclosure: I walked out on this film about halfway through, so if it had a big climactic finish that blew the audience away, I missed it. But what I saw was very underwhelming and not worthy of the high critical praise Dear White People is getting so far.

This movie is about the black student body at an ivy league school, and the junior film maker who is fighting the “white authority” for perceived injustices. I’m not an idealist and I know there is still racism in America, but the movie does a poor job of backing up the protagonist’s arguments. She makes wild claims without really arguing her testimony, while hiding behind big $2 words to fool the audience. To make matters worse, nearly all the characters in the film are stereotypical clichés, further damaging any statement the filmmakers are trying to make. For me personally, even the style of the film was hard to watch, it was very jumpy in a Wes Anderson-like way, but with none of the quirky, funny dialogue and scenes that make his films so endearing.

The film just seemed like it was going as far as it could to create controversy. It’s the kind of film that critics love because it is “edgy” and “eye opening” but I just don’t see the substance that they are all hyping. Maybe I’m just a dumb white guy.

St. Vincent is pretty much what the previews made it out to be. Bill Murray plays Vincent, a crass old man that takes a boy under his wing. Vincent is an ass to everyone except those he cares about, but the movie does reveal as it goes along that there is more to him than meets the eye. Murray is at his comedic roots in this film and it is probably the best he’s been in a long time. The movie also features funny actors Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd. Personally I didn’t find it as funny as I’d hoped. It produced a lot of chuckles but no “belly laughs” and ultimately will probably be a fairly forgettable film. Not one that I’d recommend rushing to see in the theater, but worthy of a redbox rental in a month.

This movie wasn’t initially on my schedule. Granted I didn’t know anything more than it was something about gay activists. When it came out and started getting stellar reviews (currently a whopping 94% on Rotten Tomatoes), I took a chance, and very happy I did. It is much more than a story about gay rights. For one, it takes place in 1984, at a time when homosexuals faced more public derision and hate than they do now. But more, the movie is about so much more than just their plight. It is obviously about acceptance, but also the coming together of different people against oppression.

I didn’t know going in, but the movie is based on the true story of the 1984/85 miner’s strike in the UK. In London, a young idealistic gay man named Mark is participating in the annual gay pride parade. He and his friends see the normally harassing police force isn’t as heavy as in years past, leading Mark to realize they are all up north troubling the picketing mineworkers. Feeling for their situation and knowing what it is like to be persecuted, he decides to start the LGSM, or Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. Starting out just asking for pocket change on the streets, and growing from there, they eventually raise thousands for the struggling miner families. At first, the conservative miner families resist the LGSM, but when Mark refuses to quit, they finally are accepted and become members of their tight-knit group.

This movie is more than just a gay pride film. It is about the pride we can all take in who we are, and also how one man can help another, even if they really have nothing in common. What I really like about the film is it is eye-opening without pushing an agenda, and uplifting while not stooping to tugging at your heart strings. Some films with a similar subject matter have the protagonists standing on a soap box screaming at the world about the injustices they face. In Pride, they accept the way the world is while hoping for it to be better one day, and subtly striving for that. No matter your views or religion, there is a lot any person can take away from this movie.

Kill the Messenger as a movie is pretty good. It has a gripping plot (for the most part, more on that), and a fine cast lead by Jeremy Renner as Gary Webb. It does go to great lengths to paint Webb as a hero who wouldn’t back down from his story, making some omissions to really set him up as a martyr in the film. The real story isn’t so clear cut, but this is Hollywood after all.

For the young-ins out there, Gary Webb wrote a story in the mid 90’s alleging the Reagan administration turned a blind eye to cocaine coming into the country, allowing the dealers to sell it on our streets and then funnel money back to the Contra Nicaraguan resistance movement, in an effort to depose its Cuba- and Soviet-friendly government. Webb went so far as to say the CIA was personally involved in backing the drug lords, and were responsible for the increased crack cocaine problem in the US starting in the 80’s. There had been some rumors before Webb’s story, but his was the first and most recognizable to lay it all out in such detail.

The movie shows the timeline of what leads Webb to start his investigation, the whole process to print, and then the backlash as the government and other major news outlets pick his story apart. It portrays reasoning for the news backlash as a way to get even, because they missed the story themselves, which may or may not have been the case. His story certainly did make some wild allegations which were not always backed up with proof, but in the end it did open eyes and lead to investigations into the CIA. The movie slows down in the latter half after the excitement of the news story has all ready been told, and cinematically it is probably never a good idea to put the biggest bombshell of the movie in the first 30 minutes, but as a whole it is still good. Whether you think Webb was a strong ideal driven reporter who wouldn’t bend to the government, or an attention-seeking tabloid type that only got his facts from criminals facing hard time, he certainly did shake things up.

Sometimes it doesn’t get any better than a good old war movie. Fury is about a tank crew who have been together for a long time, starting in Africa and moving to France, Belgium, and now in April of 1945 find themselves finally in the heart of Germany as the war winds down. But as the leader Don, played by Brad Pitt, says near the beginning, “The war will end soon, but before it does, a lot more people have to die.”

The movie starts with a new private, Norman, joining the crew to replace a killed member. He was trained as a clerk but now finds himself a gunner on the tank Fury. He struggles with being a war soldier and the brutal nature of the job, as well as the daily life and death balance that comes with it. The movie shows a raw and unflinching account of the final days of the war, as well as the cold shield the soldiers cloak themselves in to protect their sanity, to allow them to do the things they must to win. As Norman learns these lessons, he becomes a member of the brotherhood. By the end, he ends up performing heroic deeds he never could have imagined.

Some good acting in this movie, by Pitt and one of my favorites lately, the unsung Michael Pena, but perhaps the star is Shia LaBeouf. The man may be batshit crazy, but he is one hell of an actor, and he is the center of every scene he’s in. He plays Boyd “Bible”, and throughout the film he is balancing his deeply religious views with the acts he is committing, and LaBeouf subtly conveys the daily dilemmas he faces. His performance is getting a lot of attention, if he can keep his life together off camera maybe he can get his acting career back on track after his recent speed bumps. Fury is a strong war film, it might not win many awards this season, but it is sure to get more than few nominations.

In Men, Women & Children, there is a lot going on, probably more than I can put down in words. I think the movie tries to be a grand exposé on how social media, and to an extent the internet as a whole, has changed the way we interact with each other, but it really narrows itself into more of how it has changed our sexual natures. As such, while it should probably be a soft but biting narrative, it comes across more as the director hitting us over the head with a hammer to drive his point home.

The movie follows the lives of 8 to 10 individuals, each with their own problems. A husband and wife are in a stale relationship. He wants a closer intimacy, while she wants a more adventurous sex life, and they each find these elsewhere. A young teen has spent so long watching “deviant” pornography online that he can no longer be aroused by anything less. A teenage girl posts suggestive pictures online, with the support (and promotion) of her mother, who tries to live her failed stardom lifestyle through her daughter. And another girl struggles with her mother’s over-control of her internet life. The mother is trying to protect her daughter from online predators, but ends up doing more harm than good. All of these stories (and others) interconnect at times in the small community the players all live in.

The movie is well acted, and while not necessarily full of “stars”, they are all recognizable faces who have been in many films. The standout for me was the portrayal of Tim, played by Ansel Elgort. His mother recently left to move in with a man she met online, leaving her family behind. Ansel is on a roll lately with Divergent and The Fault in Our Stars, and his acting here really steals the film.

This movie was written and directed by Jason Reitman, who has done some terrific films (Juno, Up in the Air), but lately has had a string of busts (Adult World, Labor Day). I wouldn’t call Men, Women & Children a bust, but it doesn’t have the heart and appeal his successes enjoyed.

Dracula Untold is exactly what the title states, the “untold” story of how Dracula came to be. Neither very flashy nor very exciting, it is basically a subpar drama within a darker text. The cast is made up of faces you recognize but no big names, and as a whole the movie feels like nothing more than a money grab by the film studio.

Prince Vlad the Impaler rules over the tiny area of Transylvania, while paying homage to the larger Turk army and rulers nearby. When his superiors call for all the boys in his kingdom to be conscripted to their army, he visits the “monster” living in the nearby mountain and asks for the power to fight back. While his intentions are good, thus is born Dracula. The rest of the film is his fight against the Turks and the outcome of his decision.

Not a terrible movie, but certainly nothing to rush to see. I’m sure it will make it to netflix pretty quickly, and you can stream it there if you want to kill a short 1 1/2 hours.

Movie awards season is just about here, so we’ll be getting a steady diet of the films movie studios hope to blow everyone away with. The Judge is clearly one such film, with a brilliant cast of oscar winners and nominees. Unfortunately this movie isn’t as good as they wanted it to be.

Starring Robert Downey Jr and Robert Duvall, it is the story of big league, big city lawyer Hank (Downey) called home to defend his father, longtime small city judge Joseph (Duvall) from a murder charge. The two were never close, in fact are downright spiteful to each other for a good portion of the movie. Hank feels his father was too hard on him growing up, always keeping him at a distance even while keeping his other kids close. You learn as the movie goes along what kept the two separate, and each’s reasonings for keeping things as the status-quo. Unfortunately the movie tries too hard, and keeps trying to outdo itself with more and more revelations. Though it does feature tremendous acting by Downey and Duvall, as well as supporting parts by Billy Bob Thornton and Vincent D’Onofrio, the brilliant portrayals can’t save the script. It’s not a bad movie, in fact I think it is mostly good overall, but it is certainly not the great film that I think they were hoping for. This one is worth seeing for the acting alone, but ultimately forgettable.

How does a really bad movie get really good reviews? The Guest is by all definitions a “B” movie, and for fans of those types of films it is probably a good one. I was hoping for more though, and the beginning started with a lot of promise. David shows up at a family’s remote house, claiming to be best friends in the army with their now deceased son. He ingratiates himself with each member of the family, by becoming a drinking buddy with the dad, a confidant with the daughter, and a protector for the bullied son. However, the suspenseful music from the get-go lets you know there is something more sinister going on. When a few murders happen around town, all to people that have caused problems for this family, the daughter becomes suspicious.

Before you know it, a secret special forces police group gets involved and the movie takes a turn for the cliche. The second half of the film is full of terrible dialogue, terrible plot directions, and terrible acting. By the end, it is really not much better than a hack n’ slash 80’s gore fest with buckets of fake blood being splashed around. If you like to laugh at moments that are supposed to be serious, this movie is made for you.