Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Felicity Jones – Movie

December 20, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Felicity Jones stars as Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen Erso, a scientist-turned-farmer who once reluctantly helped design the Death Star for the Empire. Jyn had run away from harm when her father had been captured, under the iron hand of the director of the massive weapon project, Orson Krennic, who expects Galen to finish what he started. We catch up with her later, as an adult, having been traiend by Saw Gerrera on the ways of the solider, then imprisoned, but Cassian Andor, an espionage agent working for the the Rebel Alliance, sees her potentially helping their side to find the scientist, assembling a rag-tag team of fighters to go on a mission to snatch the blueprints, including one that exploits an Achilles Heel, from the Death Star before it wreaks havoc on a terrified Rebel Alliance.

La La Land (2016) Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling – Movie Review

December 20, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Emma Stone stars as a struggling actress named Mia, who works as a barista in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. lot, in between auditions that only serve to make her feel frazzled by the experience. Ryan Gosling is an ambitious jazz pianist, Sebastian, whose love of more traditional jazz sounds puts him at odds with those who wish to hire him, either for playing Holiday ditties as background music, or in modern jazz fusion bands who seem to cater to new crowds who don’t particularly care about serious jazz as he sees it. The pair soon meet and begin a romance, all the while trying to make it in Tinseltown.

Manchester by the Sea (2016) Casey Affleck – Movie Review

December 12, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Manchester by the Sea is a drama concerning a contentious Boston ‘burb janitor named Lee Chandler, working with little joy for a meager wage and a basic one-room abode. It turns out that there is a reason for him being anguished at this stage in his life, which is something we come to know more about as the film plays out. He’s prone to getting into fights, he’s resistant to making emotional connections, and, in general, he’s a person too wrapped up in trying to suppress his own thoughts and feelings all of his waking hours that he has little energy to expend in trying to deal with the needs of those around him. In short, he’s a man in grief but hasn’t yet dealt with it head on, and actively avoids anything that might push his mind toward any notions he’s just not ready, willing or able to.

Shut In (2016) Naomi Watts – Movie Review

December 10, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Naomi Watts stars as child psychologist Mary Portman, living with her eighteen-year-old paralyzed stepson, Stephen, the victim of a car accident that saw Mary’s husband perish. Stephen has always been a problem child, something that Mary feels guilty about not being able to solve before choosing to send him away, and now feels even more guilty that she has made a decision to send him away again so that he can get better care and so that she can move on with her life. A cold front brings in a major snowstorm to their town in Maine that has both of them trapped in their home, as Mary begins to have visions of a boy she thinks may be the ghost of a patient of hers who went missing, a troubled foster child Tom. She’s not sure if her visions are real or imagined, causing her to doubt herself as things within the home begin to seem increasingly more dangerous.

Rules Don’t Apply (2016) Warren Beatty – Movie Review

December 4, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Warren Beatty’s film involves a real-life figure in billionaire Howard Hughes, though most of the action involves two young associates of Hughes. Set mostly in the late 1950s, we follow the attempts by a young, virginal, devout Baptist pageant winner named Marla Mabrey, who travels with her mother to Los Angeles in order to become an actress for aviation mogul Howard Hughes, who owns a movie studio and regularly grooms young women like her to become stars in his employ.

Marla gets on the payroll and is soon driven around by a new chauffeur in Hughes’ fleet, Frank Forbes, a young man studying economics who wants to also climb the ranks by making a good impression with the reclusive Hughes, who he sees as a sort of mentor on how to be successful in business and real estate. Things get complicated when the already engaged Frank begins to develop feelings for Marla, something also not allowed by Hughes’ employees to do. Coupled with Hughes’ declining mental stability, all parties find themselves in unenviable positions if they wish to proceed to success in life, career, and love.

Gleason (2016) documentary (Steve Gleason) – Movie Review

December 3, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Gleason is a documentary film around the trials and tribulations of Steve Gleason, a former NFL player who retired from the game in 2008, then was diagnosed with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2011, concurrent to learning of the pregnancy of his wife Michel with their first child. It’s a disease that has no cure, and those who are afflicted by it usually die within 2-5 years after diagnosis. The sufferer’s motor skills begin to erode, eventually losing them altogether, including the ability to speak without technological assistance.

Knowing that the odds for survival were bleak, and recovery completely unheard of, Gleason sets about recording his life with the assistance of a couple of associates, and begins to make video logs, while he still has a voice, imparting his philosophies on life, love, and fatherhood for his young son to watch at a day when he can understand, appreciate and take them to heart most. It’s something he didn’t receive as much as he would like from his own father, who worried about himself much more and expected his sons to think and act just like him, and Steve both wants (and, to some extent, internally fears) that his son will have his own mind about things.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) Movie Review

November 27, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Eddie Redmayne stars as klutzy magizoologist Newt Scamander, the author of the future guide of magical creatures that exist in this world and, of course, where they may be found. Set mostly in New York City in 1926, we find those who can work magic living in a world where the No-Majs, aka, those who have no powers to speak of, are kept in the dark to all of the fantastic things going on around them due to spells of ‘obliviation’, which erases their memories of them.

Scamander arrives in New York with a magical suitcase chock full of his magical creatures, highly illegal to possess in these parts, with the intention of releasing one of the most magnificent among them, a Thunderbird, in the wilds of Arizona. However, in a mishap, that suitcase is swapped with one belonging to a struggling No-Maj factory worker and baker named Jacob Kowalski, who ignorantly ends up releasing a bunch of the forbidden creatures out into the public. In this environment, the wizards have their own factions and the No-Majs have an upstart group known of more zealous elements bent on weeding them out, though there is a struggle for power even within those ranks with people forging forward with their own agendas for wanting to expose the secret society of magic existing within the city.

Moana (2016) Disney; Dwayne Johnson – Movie Reviews

November 25, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Moana is the chief’s daughter within her tribe on the New Zealand island of Motunui. Unlike most girls in her Maori village, she is destined to be the chief of her tribe herself one day, pushing them to further greatness in that insular community. Traveling beyond their surrounding reef is forbidden, but a lack of fish and disease in the plant life caused by a curse has Moana exercising her leadership skills by beyond the horizon to find enough food for all of them. In order to reverse the curse, her grand ocean quest is to find the source of their woes by enlisting the services of a Maui , a shape-shifter demigod who must return a long-lost magical emerald stone he once stole that changed the world for the worse.

Arrival (2016) Amy Adams – Movie Reviews – Sci-Fi

November 14, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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After twelve alien spacecraft have descended to various spots across Earth, American Amy Adams stars as Dr. Louise Banks, a linguistics professor who is visited by representatives from the U.S. Army to try to decipher the alien language heard on a recording of their “voices”. Unable to process the language without being there in person, she is soon part of a team of scientists who enter one of the spacecraft above Montana in order to speak to the Heptapods (as the squid-like aliens come to be known due to their seven perceptible limbs) directly, on the hope that she can glean enough from their conversation of ink-symbols to figure out just why they’ve come to our planet before the military in other countries the aliens have descended upon get jittery and determine the best course of action is to obliterate them before they do it to us.

Doctor Strange (2016) Benedict Cumberbatch – Movie Reviews

November 3, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Benedict Cumberbatch stars as New York-based neurosurgeon, Dr. Stephen Strange, a big shot at his profession with as big an ego to flaunt, a level of cocky, self-satisfied smarm not too dissimilar to Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man films. His job is, literally, in his hands, until a car accident occurs that leaves him without much use of them for surgery purposes, causing him to go into an emotional and psychological tailspin if he cannot figure out a solution. Western medicine has no answers, so he seeks alternate ways, and that leads toward a rumored miracle breakthrough that takes him to Kathmandu, Nepal, where he connects with a monastic order of master magicians led by the powerful mystic, the Ancient One (Swinton), who proceeds to open Strange’s mind to powers within him that are far greater than the mere physical. However, a wayward former student of the Ancient One has gone against their teachings and has removed pages from one of the most sacred of the magical library’s many tomes, one that taps into the Dark Dimension that may bring to Earth dangerous forces that even the most powerful sorcerers on the planet can’t thwart.