When I last saw Lord of War 13.5 years ago, I wasn’t completely enamored beyond the acting and… my opinion roughly remains the same, some solid performances though I guess I was more engrossed with the story this go around.
Mortal Engines is to say the least imperfect and I suppose even disappointing considering Peter Jackson was involved as a producer and co-screenwriter, and indeed it’s not very well written and yet I did find myself relatively entertained.
I wasn’t as big of a fan of Audition as some and don’t consider top-tier in the J-horror sub-genre mainly due to the surreal nature of the second half but the performances from the two leads were great.
The Favourite is probably one of the more disappointing movies of 2018 for me with a plot that became too tedious and despite being less than two hours, felt too long. That being said, the performances from the cast were all incredibly strong.
I so wanted to love The Last Mani but unfortunately due to a needlessly overstuffed plot spreading across different sub-genres, it never quite meshed very well but with some work, this could have been a solid film.
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek is a fun little independent film noir-thriller featuring some solid performances by James Badge Dale and Chris Mulkey and is worthy of a rental.
The Craft is actually a fun little teen-witch drama from the mid-90s and even though it’s hardly perfect, the film was entertaining and featured good performances from its core cast.
Willard is a creepy enough adaptation that works thanks to Crispin Glover’s wonderfully creepy performance, perhaps his best role.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is another lackluster movie of this new franchise that, especially when we go to Hogwarts for a short time, made me wish I was watching the Harry Potter franchise instead of this one.
Kalifornia is one hell of a road trip of a movie that excels thanks two amazing performances from Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis, and if this film had found any traction, Pitt at the very least should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination.
Barb Wire had the potential to be a wild, bat-s insane sci-fi actioner and instead we get a sloppily edited movie with some poor performances combined with a bad script and pedestrian directing.
Starsky & Hutch is one of the better, for what it’s worth, TV-to-film adaptations as Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson were great together and the humor mostly landed and seeing this 15 years later was a lot of fun.
There’s no doubt Queen is a true hall of fame band and Freddie Mercury a transformative musician, but this bio-pic, while well produced and finely acted, feels a bit sterilized relaying Mercury’s life but keeping it within the PG-13 realm.
There’s Nothing Out There isn’t great B-movie horror or anything yet there is a fun element to these independently made films where there is a lot of passion both in front of and behind the camera.
Creed II is another brilliant entry into the Rocky franchise and features a great performance from Michael B. Jordan with some solid work by Sylvester Stallone and Tessa Thompson.