Joy (2015) Jennifer Lawrence – Movie Review

December 22, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

Jennifer Lawrence stars as the titular Joy, whom we meet as a young girl with a head full of interesting ideas on how to make life great. Real life seemed to squash those early dreams, opting not to go to college despite being the valedictorian of her high school, and then entering in through a short-lived marriage and raising two kids mostly on her own. Her home life in Long Island is like a kooky sitcom, with a shut-in mother hooked on soaps in one bedroom, a Venezuelan lounge singer ex-husband in her basement, a father who comes to her for a place to stay while his own relationship issues get sorted out, a half-sister who despises everything Joy’s about, and a beloved grandmother (the film’s narrator) who still believes in her dreams to be better than all of this.

The Revenant (2015) Leonardo DiCaprio – Movie Review

December 21, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Hugh Glass, who is mauled by a mama grizzly bear while out with a hunting party of fur trappers, leaving him barely clinging to life with severe trauma and a plethora of injuries. Glass’s teenage son Hawk (a fictional character added for dramatic effect), who was the son of a murdered Pawnee lover, won’t leave his side, though that also leaves him largely unprotected among a group of men with their own prejudices, and their own reasons to hate the natives of the area, especially John Fitzgerald, who thinks Glass is a lost cause that’s just dead weight on getting back to civilization that should be put out of his misery. The misery for Glass doesn’t end there, as he’s eventually left for dead (hence the title), committed to dragging himself out of his shallow grave, crawling high and low, through rocks, rivers and snow, in order to try to right the wrongs that have been perpetrated against him.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) JJ Abrams – Movie Review

December 19, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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An orb-like droid named BB-8 has some technology placed within him that contains a map showing the whereabouts of Luke Skywalker, and there are several interested parties, some benevolent and some evil, that desperately want to get a hold of this for their own purposes. In protection of the droid are a scavenger from the desert planet of Jakku named Rey, a failed stormtrooper turned hero nicknamed Finn, intergalactic smugglers Han Solo and Chewbacca, and, to a lesser extent, a resistance pilot named Poe Dameron, who have come to reclaim their beloved ship, the Millennium Falcon. Out to wrest the information from them is a powerful faction known as the First Order, Dark-siders who’ve vowed to restore the galaxy back to the former glory of the Empire (complete with stormtroopers, TIE fighters, and a secret weapon of mass destruction), out to crush the upstart alliance known as the Resistance.

The Lobster (2015) Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz – Movie Review

December 16, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos directs this strange alternate universe, near-future setting, which feels cold, oppressive, and bizarre. It’s his first English-language feature-length effort, with a little French thrown in, still quite astute, even if it’s not his mother tongue thanks to the uniqueness of the story and a very solid cast, most of whom are in complete deadpan mode. Many of the characters have been stripped away from their emotions, as if there is little joy to be found in their continued existence, as the hotel beats it into their minds that it is much more advantageous and safe to be in a relationship with someone than it is to be alone; and if you cant find a mate, you don’t even deserve to be human.

In the Heart of the Sea (2015) Chris Hemsworth – Movie

December 10, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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The main story is framed by fictional scenes of Herman Melville visiting the Nantucket home of Tom Nickerson, the last living survivor of the voyage of the “Essex”. Nickerson is beyond reluctant to recount what happened, clearly still traumatized by an experience he deems to be unspeakable, but Melville’s persistence, the insistence of Nickerson’s wife, a tidy sum of money, and enough liquor to help him get through it, are enough to ultimately get him to open up and tell his story for the first time to anyone.

Nickerson, played as a young cabin boy by Tom Holland (60-year-old Brendan Gleeson isn’t remotely passable as a man in his early forties), relates of the story of “Essex” First Mate Owen Chase, a seasoned seaman worthy of being captain who had to settle for being second in command for one more adventure due to being “of low birth” as the son of a farmer as compared to the relatively less experienced captain of the ship, George Pollard, who comes from a privileged family of naval adventurers. (How Nickerson knows of all of the events that led up to his actual participation when he never wanted to relive or discuss them with anyone is one of the problems with the needless narrative framing device). Their mission is to venture out and bring back 2000 barrels of whale oil, but Holland is clearly over his head in command, and gets little help from Chase after chiding him for his social status persistently. Calamities abound, but they stubbornly refuse to come back without their full shipment of oil, which sends them off to the whale-rich waters of the southern Pacific Ocean, where they encounter the rumored 100-foot whale thought too massive for any whaling vessel to take down.

Krampus (2015) Emjay Anthony, Adam Scott – Movie Review

December 5, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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It’s Christmas time for one particular family, which means yet another gathering at the home of workaholic Tom and OCD Sarah, and the rest of the dysfunctional unit for three claustrophobic days that mostly involve snippy complaining and petty squabbling. Tom and Sarah’s young son Max, at perhaps the last age when Santa Claus might still be seemingly real idea, writes a letter to the mythical North Pole resident that relates his wish of Christmas with his family being “like it used to be.” However, when his letter is found by his bratty cousins and openly mocked, Max tears up his letter, and abandons his wishful beliefs, which inadvertently causes a chain of horrific events when Krampus, the evil shadow of Saint Nicholas who terrorizes the naughty children, arrives in the wake of a massive blizzard to put an end to the family bickering for good.

Creed (2015) Michael B. Jordan, Stallone – Movie Review

November 28, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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Michael B. Jordan stars as Adonis Johnson, the illegitimate son of former world heavyweight champion boxer Apollo Creed, who died in the ring before he was born, and a woman Creed had an affair with who died while Adonis was a young boy. Apollo’s widow Mary Anne pulls Adonis out of his hard-knock life foster care and juvenile hall to adopt him as her own son, raising Adonis to be a fine young man with a bright future in business. However, it seems Adonis is his father’s son after all, opting to drop out of white-collar life for a chance to prove himself in the ring as a self-taught, up-and-coming pugilist, undefeated as an amateur boxer in Mexico before deciding to head out to Philadelphia to seek out the training of Rocky Balboa, current South Philly restaurateur who was once the boxer who ended Apollo’s reign in the ring before they became good friends later in life.
Rocky’s initially reluctant, but soon capitulates to the earnest young man’s demands. Despite wanting to make it on his own terms as Adonis Johnson (his mother’s maiden name), soon word gets out that he’s Apollo Creed’s son, which opens a huge door of opportunity when the reigning light heavyweight champion from England, “Pretty” Ricky Conlan, wants one big marquee match-up to give him enough money to survive before he goes off to prison. Long-shot odds for Apollo ratchet up to next to impossible when Rocky is diagnosed with a serious illness that threatens to take the former champ down for the count for good.

The Good Dinosaur (2015) Pixar, Disney – Movie Review

November 26, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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Offering up a sort of alternate prehistory on what might have happened bad the theoretical asteroid that hit Earth 65 million years ago that wiped out all of the dinosaurs not occurred, dinosaurs are the ones that have advanced to learn how to speak and perform agriculture. We spy Poppa and Momma awaiting the hatching of three of their eggs, springing forth unruly Buck, enthusiastic Libby, and overly jumpy runt Arlo. Buck and Libby take readily to their parents instructions, but Arlo is always lagging behind in his rites of passage, primarily out of his innate sense of fear, causing Poppa to have to take a more aggressive stance with the tyke to get him where he should be in life. When their silo of corn is constantly being raided by an unknown critter, Arlo is tasked with putting an end to it. After setting his trap and going in for the kill, Arlo discovers a feral Neanderthal boy with dog-like tendencies, and finds he can’t bring himself to do it. Mishaps arise that see Arlo and Spot (as Arlo has dubbed him) washed away in a river and subsequently quite far from home, forcing them to make the long, perilous journey back through strange lands full of stranger creatures.

Brooklyn (2015) Saoirse Ronan – Movie Review

November 25, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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Set in the early 1950s, Saoirse Ronan stars as Eilis Lacey, whom we find at the beginning of the film as a young woman who has grown to not have much of a life worth bragging about in her quaint small town in Enniscorthy, Ireland, where she lives with her lonely widowed mother, Mary, and her kindly older sister, Rose. Eilis finds the town a bit stifling for her, especially working short hours for a bitter spinster who demeans her. She’s been anxious for more, so when a kindly Irish priest living in New York offers her the opportunity to come to America to work in a department store in Brooklyn and a chance to build another life for herself, she’s excited for the chance, even though she dreads leaving her family and home behind. A major bout of homesickness threatens to cut her new life abroad short, at least until she is wooed and courted by a local Italian-American plumber named Tony, whose sweetness and gentlemanly demeanor opens her up to a world of new possibilities of love and a potential future. However, Ireland eventually comes a-knocking when bad news crosses shores, which requires a brief visit where she can see all of the wonderful things she was missing, causing her to go from a young woman with seemingly no future to a more mature one who has to choose between two possible bright ones.

Spotlight (2015) Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo – Movie Review

November 23, 2015 ~ Vince Leo

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In 2001, the Boston Globe’s new editor-in-chief is Marty Baron, a Jewish media exec coming in from Miami to take over the reins of a paper that has always catered to a predominantly Catholic community and readership, but one on the cusp of primarily getting their news through their AOL connection and the World Wide Web. Baron’s first order of business is in getting to the guts of what the paper does and try to make it relevant to the readers they serve, and, in a conversation with Walter “Robby” Robinson, who leads a four-person investigative squad known as “Spotlight”, he persuades them to put their current story on hold and dive headfirst into getting to the root of a story about a priest who has been accused of several instances of molestation in the Boston community he serves, as it seems he has had a pattern of doing this wherever the Catholic Church has placed him, only for the story to be mostly buried and see him re-emerge in another community some time later. With the Church having such strong influence in the town, Robinson knows they’re going to face strong opposition wherever they dig, but the more resistance they get, the more they become convinced that the problem isn’t just one priest, or several — it’s an entire system within the Church that systematically keeps the stories under wraps for fear of shining a light on the many disturbing criminal acts within from individual serial perpetrators, as well as the environment of cover-ups that allows them to operate, seemingly without impunity.