Race (2016) Stephan James, Jason Sudeikis – Movie Reviews

February 23, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Jesse Owens, son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, became a track star at his alma mater of Ohio State University, where Larry Snyder, a former promising track star himself, is head coach of the track team. Coach Snyder sees raw talent in the young man, and knowing that the 1936 Olympics isn’t too far in the distance, he thinks that Owens is just the diamond in the rough the country needs to win Olympic Gold, showing him how to work on a proper start to the race, and adding the long jump to his repertoire. However, the Olympics is to be held in the lions’ den of racial intolerance, Berlin under Hitler’s regime, and the intent of the games under the leadership of Joseph Goebbels is to show that the Aryan race is the supreme race in the world. With the International Olympic Committee conflicted about whether to boycott the games, and the NAACP requesting Owens also sit it out in protest, it’s looking bleak for what might be the fastest runner in the world to find his claim to fame.

Son of Saul (2015) Laszlo Nemes – Movie Reviews

February 21, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The film showcases a special type of prisoner in the death camps known as the ‘sonderkommandos’, who would, under penalty of death, assist with the rounding up of other prisoners to put into the gas chambers, sift through their clothing for valuables, and also dispose of their bodies, which are subsequently burned into ashes. We follow one sondercommando called Saul, a Hungarian of Jewish descent, who is tasked with the nightmarish responsibility that will likely only grant him a few extra months of life, as they learned too many secrets to keep alive for long. During one of the gas chamber sessions, he discovers a young boy who manages to survive the extermination, only to have the Germans make sure it isn’t for long. The Germans want to study the body further, but Saul decides he won’t let this happen, eventually coming to the determination that the child should have a proper burial with a Rabbi to deliver some final words. Saul risks his life, as well as of many others, to try to find such a man in the midst of all of the chaos, eventually getting caught up in a potential uprising that might mean an end to the nightmare for many in the camp.

The Witch (2015) Robert Eggers – Horror Movie Reviews

February 20, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set in New England in the early 1630s, six decades before the infamous Salem Witch trials, we find a family of devout Puritans vacating the tight-knit community they could not see eye to eye with, relocating to a small farm on the border of the untamed woods. Ralph Ineson plays the patriarch, William, who finds it a struggle to raise crops in the area, forcing him to go out into the woods to hunt with son Caleb for sustenance until they can grow enough to feed themselves, and sell the rest. However, things begin to become ominous when eldest daughter Thomasin loses sight of their youngest, the newborn Samuel, and that’s just the start of many bizarre signs to come.

Where to Invade Next – Michael Moore – Movie reviews

February 17, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The basic premise involves Michael Moore “invading” other countries, not for oil or to prop up our own dictators, but to steal away ideas that he feels would actually benefit his native United States to be the kind of society that could only exist in his most idealistic of dreams, were we to implement them. From Italy to Iceland to Tunisia, Moore looks at such things as the educational system, government structure, fight for gender equality, the prison systems, and the treatment of the workers, and suggests that many of the ills of our own country could benefit from the examples set by others, who seemingly do the opposite of how we do things in the U.S. and achieve much better results.

How to Be Single (2016) Dakota Johnson – Movie Review

February 16, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Dakota Johnson gets the lead role as Alice, who decides that she and her long-term college boyfriend Josh should break up for a while in order to experience what being single is actually like before they proceed through the rest of their lives together. She takes up a job as a paralegal in a law firm, where she meets the boisterous Robin, who shows her the ropes of the life of a single girl in New York City — important things like never paying for drinks and not using an Emoji before returning a text (after waiting a day to even do it). Meanwhile, Alice’s sister Meg, a workaholic in the medical industry with no time for a relationship or starting a family, decides that, perhaps, it’s time to rethink those notions. Unlike Meg, Lucy is on a gaggle of dating sites trying to find the man with whom she’ll marry and start a family with through a series of algorithms she’s sure will be the path to success.

Zoolander 2 (2016) Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson – Movie Review

February 14, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Derek Zoolander is back, the eternally daft and narcissistic male supermodel, now retired and reclusive, who has been persuaded by a ‘fashion police’ agent working for Interpol, Valentina Valencia, to help find the killers of a growing list of celebrities who’ve struck what appears to be Zoolander’s signature “Blue Steel” pose for an Instagram selfie done right before their moment of death. His wife deceased and his child taken away by protective services, Derek has a chance of getting Derek Jr. back by coming out of exile in the mountainous wilderness of northern New Jersey (one of the film’s feeble jokes) and assisting with the investigation in Rome, with former rival-turned-friend Hansel in tow. The clues lead them back to Zoolander’s incarcerated megalomaniacal nemesis Mugatu in a plot involving the search for the Fountain of Youth.

Deadpool (2016) Ryan Reynolds, Marvel – Movie Review

February 12, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The origin of Deadpool is told in an extended flashback sequence in the middle of the film, pushing forward a relatively improbable story of a rebellious ex-special ops, mercenary type named Wade Wilson who meets his “soulmate” in the equally deviant spitfire named Vanessa. Just as strongly as their bond of love begins to take hold, it’s all about to come to an end, when Wilson is diagnosed with late-stage cancer. With seemingly no real cure in sight, Wilson reluctantly agrees to be a guinea pig for a shadowy underground company that promises a cure for his condition, though he quickly realizes after it’s too late that their operation isn’t quite on the up and up. Alas, Wilson, known for having almost no filter on voicing his thoughts in the most insulting of ways, antagonizes the company’s mad doctor, Ajax, into paying special attention to him in a series of sadistic experiments that triggers his mutant superpowers of regeneration, but also leaves him horribly disfigured. The rest of the movie deals with the escaped Wilson, now operating as a costumed merc named Deadpool, trying to get his hands on the powerful Ajax to restore his looks back to normal on the hope that his beloved Vanessa can look upon his grotesque appearance with all of the attraction he yearns for.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016) Lily James – Review

February 7, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Lily James plays Elizabeth Bennet, the second-oldest sister hoping to find a proper wealthy husband in an isolated version of London that is completely surrounded by zombie masses hoping to feast on the brains of the living within its walls. In order to combat the undead, many of the families have taken to sending their children to Asia to learn martial arts from the masters in either Japan or China. Even with extinction a very real possibility, the Bennets still hope their daughters marry well, and while the more fetching eldest sister Jane is catching the eye of most potential suitors, a mixture of emotions begin to swell between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, an emotionally aloof zombie hunter of good breeding. Despite Darcy’s ill manners at times, the potential for more is still there between them, if they can survive long enough to make it all happen.

Hail Caesar (2016) Coen Brothers, George Clooney – Movie Review

February 6, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set in Hollywood of the 1950s, Josh Brolin plays Eddie Mannix, an executive of the fictional Capitol Pictures film studio who is tasked with ‘fixing’ a host of extracurricular scandals that their contracted star performers are engaged in before the tabloids get a hold of the stories and ruin their big-budget prestige pictures they’re set to appear in. One such problem involves their most bankable box office draw, Baird Whitlock, who goes missing from the set of his sprawling biblical epic of a Quo Vadis or Ben Hur type, kidnapped (kinda?) by a group of Communists in the industry to impart their philosophies in private meetings, requiring much of Mannix’s attention to keep anyone from knowing about until he figures out what’s going on.

Jane Got a Gun (2015) Natalie Portman – Movie Review

February 1, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Set primarily in the New Mexico Territory of 1871, the titular Jane is shocked to find her husband, Bill Hammond, riding home after a long time away with bullets in his back. A deadly gang of former outlaw fur traders called “the Bishop Boys”, run by the vicious John Bishop have been after them for some time for past betrayals, and Bill informs Jane to get prepared, and perhaps get moving. After dropping off their young daughter with a friend, Jane tries to enlist the services of a former lover named Dan Frost for protection, but they’ve been separated and estranged since the Civil War drove Jane to have to fend for herself, not knowing if Dan ever made it back from the conflict alive. However, Dan has his own reasons to distrust Jane, and to want Bill out of the picture, causing a tension in loyalties when Dan accepts for a fee, but only because he’s trying to get his beloved Jane back.