Speaks Reviews: Creed

★★★★

A few months back now, I sat in a movie theater, totally unsuspecting, and watched a trailer for a new film called Creed, a sort of spin-off of the Rocky Balboa films about the son of Apollo Creed (made famous by Carl Weathers in Rocky - Rocky IV). I thought very little of it. Shit. I'd never even seen Rocky. 

Speaks Reviews Rants: The Hateful Eight

★★ 1/2** out of ★★★★

Do I have to? Ugh. This is gonna be hard.

Speaks Reviews: Strong Women Edition

I was raised by a single mother. She has five sisters and no brothers. All of my aunts have daughters. I am one of two boys on my Mom's side, as far as biological cousins are concerned. Let's just say strong women outnumber strong men in my family. I've known the struggles, the fights, the good times and bad and everything in between.

Speaks Reviews: The Big Short

★★★★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

Not only is The Big Short the best movie of 2015, but it is also the most important. (Yeah. You read that right.)

Speaks Reviews: Joy

★★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

Given the mixed response from critics, I kept high hopes for Joy. I must come out right off the bat and be honest:  I love Jennifer Lawrence. I would be entertained watching her read a phone book. She is absolutely gorgeous, naturally gifted, and has proven time and time again, since bursting onto the scene with the dark indie film Winter's Bone in 2010, that she can carry a movie.

In 2015, though, the movies she gave her all to failed her. Mockingjay, Part 2 is half a movie that is way too long and its source material didn't have the "fire" of the previous two anyway. Not her fault. Now, here comes Joy, looking to get some of that late year Oscar buzz. It falls flat, wimps out, and ends up meaning absolutely nothing. Not her fault

Speaks Reviews: Star Wars - The Force Awakens (NO SPOILERS!)

A New Hope...for Me

★★★★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

**NO SPOILERS!**

One weekend day back in 1997, my Dad took me to see Star Wars. George Lucas had just re-mastered, edited, and released his original film with updated special effects. Later, I got the original remastered trilogy box set on VHS. I watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Then, I put on Return of the Jedi, finally, a few months later, and didn't even make it through.

Moral: I am not, nor have I ever been, a Star Wars fanboy.

Speaks Reviews: Spotlight

Enlightened

★★★★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

Director Tom McCarthy needed some redemption this year. He made an oddball comedy, released early in 2015, starring Adam Sandler, called The Cobbler. Everybody trashed it. I didn't even see it.

Now, here is his second film this year, your Best Picture frontrunner, Spotlight, a film of calm assuredness, free of frills and excesses, drawing a picture of an institution gone just plain wrong in the darkest of ways, made darker by a cover-up of maddening proportions.

Speaks Reviews: Room

When the Walls Come Down

★★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

There's a feeling that came over me at one point during director Lenny Abrahamson's Room that I don't often experience. I'm sure others felt it too. It is a feeling brought on by an acuteness of suspense, most often reserved for the loftiest of thrillers. Take the final moments of last year's Indie darling, the revenge thriller Blue Ruin, for example. But here, in a movie that is so tender, so loving of its characters, I can't imagine how it was executed so perfectly.

Speaks Reviews - The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2

Two Much is Not Enough

★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

About this time two years ago, I walked out of my screening of Catching Fire, the second installment of The Hunger Games franchise, literally on fire. I had seen a sequel that was better than the original, by far. A movie so good it could stand alone as a sci-fi action masterpiece. I stand by that.

Then, last year about this time, I left Mockingjay, Part 1 fully unsatisfied. I had gotten a pretty much scene-by-scene adaptation of barely half of a book that I only sort of liked to begin with. In the days of movie studios splitting apart and dragging out and rebooting and remaking entertainment for cash, we, the audience, find ourselves repeatedly dragged into mediocre movies that don't have to be mediocre. 

They don't have to be mediocre because Catching Fire isn't.

Speaks Reviews: Spectre

In with the Old

★★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

I'm appalled at some of the lukewarm reviews of the newest James Bond film, the 24th overall, Daniel Craig's fourth, and director Sam Mendes' second, Spectre. I mean, what do you people want? Here is a Bond film of the most classic form, easily the most classic Bond film featuring Daniel Craig. What do these movies have to do? What do they have to be?

Speaks Reviews: Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs

To the Power of Three

★★★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

Listen: I use Apple products as if there is nothing else. But I have no interest in the man Steve Jobs. I do have interest in anything Aaron Sorkin writes. I don't care much for Danny Boyle as a filmmaker. With these sorts of divides, I would imagine I was a bit of a tough audience for this film.

Having said that, I liked the new film Steve Jobs, based on the biography by Walter Isaacson, a man who also tackled Einstein and Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger.

I most certainly didn't love it.

Speaks Reviews: Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies

The Standing Man

★★★★ out of ★★★★

 A Speaks Movie Review

"People think wrong sometimes. People are people." - Rudolf Abel

I get juiced up about Steven Spielberg movies. His latest, Bridge of Spies, is no exception. The trailer hit, and it seemed as if there was nothing but hate. It looks "mmm pretty but typical Spielberg period schtick" and "blah blah blah." These are not direct quotes, but you get the point. People become jaded with certain types of films. I get it. I almost never get excited about a "period piece." We can't blame people for being people. But I am one who wishes to hold onto his idealism for Spielberg, the same idealism has given me over the years.

On Home Video: Cameron Crowe's Aloha

Lost in Hawaii

★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

I wasn't too far into my screening of Cameron Crowe's Aloha before I finally turned to my wife and said, "Do you have any idea what the hell is going on? I mean what is this even about?" She replied, "I know, right?!"

How It's Supposed to Be

★★★ 1/2 out of ★★★★

A Review by Kevin Powers

Action movies are supposed to be like Mission:Impossible - Rogue Nation. They are supposed to have charismatic lead actors performing death-defying stunts. They are supposed to be clear and to the point. They are supposed to be clever. They are supposed to look good, sound good, and create fun by having fun. If they bring out the 12-year-old movie dork in you...even better.

A Trainwreck that doesn't derail

★★★ out of ★★★★

A Review by Kevin Powers

I came into Judd Apatow's latest movie Trainwreck as a fan of Judd Apatow. I knew nothing of Amy Schumer other than that she is all over the place these days. I have not seen her standup. I have not watched her show, Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer. I had even heard from friends of mine, who love standup comedy and comedy television, that she's not very good. Most of my guy friends don't like her.

Deus Meus

Two Reviews in One by Kevin Powers

A few days ago, I saw Avengers: The Age of Ultron. 

At one point early in the film, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) have a conversation about artificial intelligence. Stark, or Iron Man, the billionaire weapons/technology magnate believes that its time to dust of this old idea he had floating around, like, literally floating around. 

That idea was Ultron, basically a technological brain that may have the ability not only to think but also to adapt, to reason, to feel. He and Bruce, who most definitely does not want to get angry though we want him to, are giddy talking about it. There is even an air of concern about the possibilities. Then, of course, since we're in a Marvel comic book movie, everything goes haywire and no ideas are to be discussed any more because that would get in the way of all the shit being blown up. 

It Sure Does

A Review by Kevin Powers

★★★★

Let us get one thing out there right off the bat:  I almost never seek out horror movies, especially the dime-a-dozen, PG-13 jump scare, found footage, demon possession, etc., crap that's out there these days. But there's a part of me that regrets not seeing more, though, even of those. I certainly regret not seeing more of the classic horror movies pre-"Halloween."

Even for a non-horror kind of guy, when horror movies work for me, they really work. The best horror movies, to me, are the ones that don't offer solutions but simply play on basic fears. The ones that won't let go long after you see them. Only a few "scary movies" really get down to what's really scary to human beings. That being a ghost, or person, or some other entity, or even just a fear inside our own psyches that stalks us.

Saturday Speaks (and Links): Spring Break Edition

Part of the idea behind this Saturday Speaks thing is that I actually have to put it together on Saturday morning. Alas, if I don't have time on a Saturday morning, I will not post. These have to happen on Saturday mornings when I am up early and/or don't have company (like last week). Having said that, it has been three weeks since I've done one of my weekly recap posts. Did you miss me? 

Cinderella, courageous and kind

"Cinderella"     ★★★ 1/2

A Review by Kevin Powers

Every week for the past few months, I have participated in a weekly blog series called Thursday Movie Picks. A certain theme, or category, is thrown down, and movie bloggers around the world make a list of three picks that fit that theme. Last week's theme was Live-Action Fairy Tale Adaptations. I struggled. I honestly can't remember seeing one, especially one of the traditional ones, like say, "Cinderella."

I haven't seen the 1950 Disney Animated “Cinderella” in years, but I do know that screenwriter Chris Weitz ("About a Boy", "The Golden Compass") has done an incredible job of updating and fully enriching this already well-known fairy tale.

I'm Somebody's DUFF

"The DUFF"     ★★★

A Review by Kevin Powers

"When I was in high school in the 90s, we didn't have emojis. We had to use actual facial expressions." - Mr. Filmore (Chris Wylde) in "The DUFF"

I'm a sucker for teen movies, even though I'm at a point now, where, when I see teen comedies, I relate to the teachers more than the students. I feel old, yet I'm only four years older than the star of the new teen comedy, "The DUFF." Our heroine, Bianca Piper (Mae Whitman), is a senior in high school. At 26, Whitman totally works as an 18-year-old, and she, along with the great Allison Janney, who plays her mother, Dottie, is what keeps this movie afloat.

A veteran supporting actress on TV, most notably as "Bland" Ann Veal, or Michael Cera's girlfriend, in "Arrested Development" and as Lauren Graham's daughter in NBC's "Parenthood," and even GREAT teen movies like "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (2012), Whitman gets the opportunity to carry a movie here. She succeeds. It's not as game-changingly good as Emma Stone's work in the somewhat similar teen comedy, "Easy A" (2010), but Whitman has an endearing presence that works for me.