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: 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?!"

Speaks Reviews: Robert Zemeckis' The Walk

Or Man on Wire? 

★★★ out of ★★★★

A Speaks Movie Review

The Walk is more of an experience than a movie. The only option at our local multiplex was IMAX 3D. There is, I'm sure, no other way.

Now, I rarely watch a movie in 3D if given a choice. I just don't like wearing the glasses. The Walk is only the second one I've seen, after 2012's Life of Pi, that actually looked good. And this one does look good. At times, it even looks great. And, at one point, it is absolutely awe-inducing.