What really happened?  How did this University of Washington student get arrested and then set free for a crime that has no evidence of her involvement?  Amanda Knox answers most of the questions for the Italian court case with facts that never cease to astonish throughout the whole film.  The film has a stark tone for the case that created so many mixed emotions among the public.  Different sides of the story are constantly revealed as justifications for the case outcomes are created by many different parties.  With a story this complex, it is amazing to see it masterfully handled by the direction of Brian McGinn and Rod Blackhurst.  The two directors attract the audience's eyes with clear visuals in a fuzzy situation.

Crime documentaries need multiple perspectives in order to grant the full story to the audience.  Amanda Knox makes sure that all sides of the story are told.  This is hard to do in the short 1 hour and 32 minute runtime of the film.  Still, we get to hear how the original court case was blown out of proportion by the media through the retelling by a journalist.  We get to hear how the original court case was justified by a public prosecutor named Giuliani Mignini.  And of course, we hear from Amanda Knox and her boyfriend at the time of the crime.  All of these perspectives mesh together to give the audience a full view of the crime case.  I can gladly say that I learned a lot from this documentary.

The writers choose to tell the story in a well-done chronological order.  It is hard to retell a story that lasted about a decade.  Yet, I never felt overly rushed through the documentary.  A part of the credit must go to the beautiful shots throughout the film.  Found footage combines with new clear imagery to maintain a fresh view for the film.  The color palette maintains the dark tone that often comes up in modern crime documentaries.  Yet, flashy headlines scatter across the screen to make sure that our eyes are always on-target.  These types of innovations create a quick-paced film that feels short, but well-rounded.  

The Bottom Line:  Amanda Knox covers a lot of quantity in its story, yet maintains its quality through superb visuals and multiple perspectives. 

Score: 9.6/10

Image credit: ​By Scott335 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17217794

​We would be going amiss if we did not mention the leading actors in Sicario.  Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, Looper, The Devil Wears Prada), Benicio Del Toro (The Usual Suspects), and Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men​) bring fascinating characters to life on the big screen.  None of the characters are easy to read into, creating the mysterious and dark tone in the dialogue.  There is an odd relationship between del Toro's character and Emily Blunt's character.  The ending only creates more fogginess in their relationship.  In  every film that I have seen with del Toro, his character is surrounded in a cloud of mystery.  Sicario uses his perfected character form as he portrays one of the members in the government task force.  Brolin's character is set in between the two, as a straight-edged and serious proponent of the task force.  All three of the actors are spectacularly cast and fitting for Villeneuve's thrilling cartel film.

Sicario also achieves it's suiting tone through the technical aspects.  The soundtrack is constantly pulsing through the speakers, bringing us into the terror of gang territory.  The beat chugs us through the story, often times not easily noticeable.  Most of the time, when a soundtrack is less noticeable, it fits into the film better.  There also some very unique shots that include thermal vision in a way that I have never seen before.  Birds-eye-views place us above the action a lot of the time, giving us a real sense of war.  Overall, this film is produced with the style that we expect out of Villeneuve's previous works.

The Bottom Line:  Villeneuve continues to bring tense stories with good casts to audiences who are familiar with his past works.

Score: 8.5/10

Once again, the DC universe sings an all-too-familiar tune with their new superhero/supervillain flick.  Wasted talent, music, and special effects lead the audience astray from their expectations going into Suicide Squad.  The only decently written character in the film turns out to be Deadshot.  Will Smith (Men in Black, I Am Legend, The Pursuit of Happyness) gives a refreshing performance as the assassin, leading a gang of supervillains to do good.  Unfortunately, his gang is full of misfits with poor scripts and undeveloped backgrounds.  David Ayer (Fury, End of Watch) seems to have tried a little too hard to make all of these characters relatable.  The finished product moves quickly through all of their backgrounds, leaving a lot of plot holes and storylines that could be used as individual movies.  Margot Robbie's (The Wolf of Wall Street, Focus) Harley Quinn was portrayed as a stand-out character in the trailers, but ends up as a surface character without depth.  Her one-liners all fall short, detracting from any chuckles that I hoped to get out of the film.  I understand that DC is going for a dark and grittier tone than Marvel, but we need a few decent laughs over the course of two hours!

Jared Leto's (Requiem for a Dream, Dallas Buyers Club) hype for the film through method acting also ends up going to waste.  Jared Leto's Joker is barely in the film and barely fits into the story at all.  This is a Joker that the audience has never seen before on the big screen.  That's cool, but I have no desire to spend any more time watching this Joker.  The Joker is supposed to be clever and maniacal, but Leto's portrayal is more of a mobster without any sort of purpose aside from gaining capital and bling.  Maybe he is just set-up for the next Batman film, but I'd rather see a fresh villain surface in Ben Affleck's (Argo, Good Will Hunting, Gone Girl, The Town) solo Batman film.  There is another main villain in Suicide Squad, but the villain is not even worthy of time talking about him/her, so I am going to refrain from even discussing that.   

The best part about Suicide Squad is definitely the soundtrack, which deserves a lot of credit.  The soundtrack helps to smooth out the jumpy cutting, bringing spontaneous rap and pop into the storyline.  I also liked the flare in the color palette on the screen.  Neon lights combine well with the music to give younger generations a flick that they can enjoy solely for the art.  I really wanted to fall in love with this film, but DC is struggling to create decent scripts and storylines for their star casts to work with.  Hopefully Ben Affleck's solo Batman film will introduce us to a better DC cinematic universe, but for now I will continue to be excited for Marvel films.  When a Doctor Strange trailer plays before a DC film, you know that the DC cinematic universe is on a bumpy journey!

The Bottom Line: Suicide Squad is the best DC film since The Dark Knight Rises, but that's not really saying much.

Score: 5.5/10

Image credit: ​By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America - Will Smith & David Ayer, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49300595

The Coen brothers (The Big Lebowski, True Grit, Fargo) love to leave the audience with a lot of afterthoughts about their films.  No Country for Old Men is no exception to this method.  I often struggle to enjoy Coen brother films because of the way they leave the audience in the dark.  However, like the taste of coffee their films grown on you as you mature.  Their films are deep and thought-provoking, but also use surface-level messages to keep you wondering what is really going on behind the storyline.  In a sense, the storyline is not always important, which is hard for audiences to comprehend.  Finally with No Country for Old Men, I can start to truly appreciate the high-level artform that the Coen brothers are thriving off of.  

One key factor that helps the viewers enjoy No Country for Old Men are the top-notch performances constructed by the main actors.  Josh Brolin (The Goonies) plays Llewelyn Moss, a hunter who encounters more than he can handle when he is out hunting.  Moss is a superb character with internal ideologies that lead him down a path that is bigger than he originally imagines.  On the other hand, Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones's [Men in Black] character) struggles with the path that he has followed his whole life.  The one prolonged case that Bell ends up with is enough to make him question his whole life's work.  Bell delivers the message to the audience that there is a possibility that nothing on the screen really even matters.  Here's the weird part about the film:  The Coen brothers write a whole script, then throw it at the audience, and then basically claim that it doesn't really matter.  What other filmmaker works this hard to complete a pointless project?  I think that's the point though.

The real elephant in the room for this film though is Javier Bardem (Skyfall​).  This accomplished actor creates a villain that can be held on a pedestal at the same level as The Joker in The Dark Knight.  We cannot understand his methods and he constantly shocks us.  Bardem is the perfect fit for the role of Anton Chigurh, a cold-blooded killer.  Every second that Bardem is on the screen, goosebumps crawl all over me as I wonder if he will spare the victim or not.  Furthermore, he is given signature weapons to emphasize his role as an experienced killer.  This role has surely helped him gain more notoriety as one of the greatest actors alive today.  Ever since this role, Bardem has continued to bring amazing villains to the big screen including Silva in Skyfall.

The Bottom Line:  If you do not like conceptual films that make you question life itself, then don't watch this one.  But if you never watch this film, you will have missed one of the greatest films of your lifetime!

Score: 9.8/10

Image credit: ​By MIRAMAX - onlyhdwallpapers.com, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22849805

This buddy cop film takes an odd turn after the very first scene and continues to twist down an odd road.  Shane Black directs this comedy action film with two of the most amazing actors alive, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe.  When I first saw the trailer for this film, I thought it was going to be awful and similar to other screwball comedies that use big name actors to gain an audience.   On top of that, Iron Man 3 is my least favorite Marvel movie so far and it was directed by Shane Black.  I hated it so much that I puked four times after the screening, but that's another story all together.

Throughout this film, the comedy continues to deliver as you ponder whether you are supposed to laugh at certain scenes or not.  Most of the jokes revolve around drugs, sex, and violence.  This one is not for the kiddos!  The comedy strides around the style of Rush Hour, but it is much more sophisticated and content-based.  Crowe and Gosling have surprisingly different roles than their usual drama-based characters and they play it so well.  The plot starts off with a sort of character analysis of the two "detectives" who are eventually forced to team up and find a missing girl.  The plot is very complex and at times hard to follow, but if I watch it again I will probably be able to catch everything I missed.

The best part of this film is the period piece aspect.  The set looks like it was revitalized straight from Saturday Night Fever.  The costuming gives us an authentic look at the seventies drab that used to be considered fashionable.  Gosling's impressive mustache portrays the detail of the film's setting and time period without distracting us from the plot too much.  With such a complex plot, Black does a good job of subtly bringing us back in time without forcing afros and disco balls in our face the whole time.  The music also brings us back into the seventies throughout the film.  Overall, this is basically a fantastically weird period piece and character study taking place in the seventies.

The Bottom Line:  Shane Black brings us back in time with two prominent studio actors to solve a titillating mystery.

Score: 9.0/10 

Image credit: ​http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/1462462004/The%20Nice%20Guys_Side%20A.jpeg

From the directors of Tangled and Wreck-it Ralph comes this animated film about a world comprised of animals.  The animals are divided by certain characteristics and the story is about the struggle to break their stereotyped features.  This is all coming from the studio that brought us the hit movie, Frozen.  Unlike Frozen, this is the most diverse animated film I have ever seen.  Its definitely the most diverse animated film from Disney, featuring all sorts of animals with different backgrounds.  That is funny to say about a movie that does not have any humans whatsoever.

One of the reasons I love the medium of film is because it is an object of the arts.  In my opinion, fine arts are used to spread culture.  Zootopia is a clear example of how culture is spread through cinema.  When the writers create a message about diversity and equality, the film comes out with a deeper meaning.  Zootopia not only struggles with race equality, but also sex equality.  Ginnifer Goodwin (Walk the Line) acts as a symbol for women through her character, Judy Hopps.  Hopps is an adorable bunny who is tired of being seen as prey.  She sees all hunting animals as evil, and believes that they see all of the weaker animals as wimpy and easy targets.  These ideologies are heavy-handed throughout the film, which starts to become preachy.  Everyone in the film is wrong with their judgement of others.  Personally I liked the use of diversity and the message of Zootopia, but the message was so deeply entrenched in the film that I could not feel entertained in any way.  Its as though Disney is trying to create something that will engrain itself into the minds of the youth.  The ideologies portrayed in the film are agreeable, but overall I felt brainwashed by the end.  To me, cinema needs to walk a fine line between message and fun.  It is easy for us to forget a film without both of these traits.  If something is fun to watch but leaves me without any afterthoughts, then I no longer have any feelings for the film when the lights come back on.  However if a film is too much like a sermon, then I eventually tune out the jargon and feel a disconnect from the screen.  Zootopia acted as too much of a sermon and started to annoy me because I was tired of listening.  I should not have to feel so downtrodden after a Disney film, especially when it points out everything that I am seeing in the news nowadays.  I left without much afterthought, but rather the thought that big studio cinema is no longer the same because of how modern society is evolving.  That being said, Zootopia is a very creative and intelligent film that serves as a good start to a more diverse Disney studio.

The Bottom Line:  While being the most diverse Disney film yet, Zootopia struggles with subtlety and enjoyment.

Score: 8.7/10

Image credit: http://img.lum.dolimg.com/v1/images/movie_poster_zootopia_866a1bf2.jpeg

This 1986 Indonesian action film is a cult-film lovers dream of a well made movie.  In other words, this movie sucks in the best way possible.  Rambu the Intruder is kind of a cheap rip off of Rambo, but its not really even that.  Alex Trambuan (played by Peter O'Brian) is a guy who decides to become a vigilante for pretty much no reason at all.  I think he was trying to save a woman from the villain, but the characters and plot get so turned around that I'm not really sure if that is the correct synopsis.  Not to mention, this was a midnight screening so my brain was more tuned off than usual.  

The dialogue in this film is one of the most poorly written scripts I have ever heard.  But, it added humor to the show.  To be clear, I definitely was laughing at this film, not with this film.  Odd moments of seemingly unintentional sexism and racism pop up here and there, making this reminiscent of other cult films.  The dialogue is extremely similar to that of Tommy Wiseau's masterpiece, The Room.  Yet, I loved this film as I love The Room.  I have never seen Rambo, but I'm sure that this film has almost nothing in common with it aside from maybe the character's headband.  Unlike Glen or Glenda, I actually enjoyed this SIFF awful classic film and want to see more Peter O'Brian performances.

The formatting of this screening was different because B-Movie Bingo was going on as the film screened.  If you have never done B-Movie Bingo, its pretty fun and keeps you engaged throughout the whole film.  The moderators gave out Rambu posters, VHS tapes of pizza spinning for two hours, candy, and many other prizes.  Unfortunately I didn't get a bingo until the last 20 minutes of the movie, but I still enjoyed reading my bingo board and comparing it to the others.  Overall, this was a fun way to experience an awful film.

The Bottom Line:  This cult classic features poor dubbing and ridiculous dialogue, but it is still a great achievement in filmmaking because it shows us how screen garbage can be fun to watch.

Score: 4/10

Image Credit: ​http://rymimg.com/lk/f/l/9a7d49b6c4e29cd59e4149823bd6711d/1151056.jpg

Quite a while ago I saw Pat Healy in the film Cheap Thrills and I knew that this was an actor with potential.  In Carnage Park, Healy returns to the big screen as a psychopath who entertains himself by shooting people in his territory with a sniper rifle.  The story is more complex than the previous sentence, but that's the basic idea.  Healy does a good job as a the maniacal shooter, but unfortunately the film comes off as boring, repetitive, and oddly-toned.

According to the film, this is a true story that occurred.  Honestly, the story is really weird and messed up but the movie lacks any sort of uniqueness.  The film relies heavily on jump-scares and again I will reiterate that this convention is the main reason I hate modern horror films.  I mean come on, there are so many better ways to create a horror film that don't rely on the audience always having to be ready for a loud noise and a flash of action.  Yet even when Carnage Park moves away from using jump scares, which it very briefly does, the horror aspects are less scary as they are just weird and annoying.  

My final criticism for the film is the tone.  Clearly this is a midnight film which relies on a cult tone, but scenes that could have been comedic fall flat in the film.  Oddly, the first half of Carnage Park goes for a Tarantino-esque style of story-telling.  The problem is that Tarantino films have their style for a reason whereas Carnage Park has no reason for telling the story the way that it does.  If you want a comedy horror film, actually add some humor to the mix and actually make the film enjoyable.

The Bottom Line: This one is pretty much a repetitive bore which can only pride itself in casting Pat Healy using him as an extremely boring character.

Score:  4/10

With tickets to see Tarantino's new film, I had to go back and watch the others again.  Whether this will be successful or not, I have made it through the first film and have nine to go.  After starting with Reservoir Dogs, I think that this task will not be too hard.  I truly love this film and it is a film that strives off of witty dialogue, plot twists, a fantastic compilation soundtrack, and of course Taratino-esque violence.  The classic shows off a star-studded cast that Tarantino still constantly works with.  For example, Tim Roth and Michael Madsen are both appearing in The Hateful Eight and I am truly grateful for this.  What amazing actors these two are, playing off of each others characters and giving there all for the dramatic story.

Of course, the plot brings quite a bit of ingenuity to the films.  The who-dun-it model keeps the audience guessing until the very end.  Not only that, the timeframe is unique as it shifts to past events and back into the present day.  This helps the plot reveal itself in a much more mysterious method.  This type of directing really set up and foreshadows a lot of Tarantino's later films as he has often used it over and over again for his sleek style.

Finally, it is crucial to bring up the compilation soundtrack for this film.  This is another tool that Tarantino has used to compliment his movies.  All of the 70s music really brings the audience into the time period that the movie supposedly takes place in.  Maybe I just love 70s beats, but every scene has some sort of iconic piece of music that keeps me focused on the screen through its constantly pushing tempo.  The music creates a flow that the film might not have without it.

The Bottom Line:  This is a fantastic film that foreshadows most of Tarantino's later films through its unique style and method.

​Score: 9.7/10

Great direction and strong acting work together to create a glorious cat-and-mouse chase that stands out in a classic action genre.  The French Connection plays out as a classic chase film that shows off William Friedkin's skills as a director.  With such a simple plot, Friedkin brings the audience into the forefront of the action by using multiple types of shots.  Most of the movie is compiled of chase scenes, which could have gotten old after a while.  Yet, they don't because they flow so well together.  Different long shots put the audience in a recon position, truly giving them the chance to hide from the connection.  My favorite shot of the film puts the audience up against a window, where they stake-out the connection through the glass.

To go along with this filming perfection, the acting is spectacular.  Gene Hackman plays Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, bringing a sharp edge to the character.  As a NYC cop he and his partner go around intimidating drug addicts with witty, but harsh commentary.  Hackman's acting is perfect for this; sharp and direct when enforcing the law, but friendly and relatable when he is with his partner.  The dynamic between Jimmy Doyle and his partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) also gives a buddy cop aspect to the movie.  Russo and Doyle connect to each other perfectly and are a great duo in action.

The one critique I have for this film is the ending.  Without giving away any spoilers, I felt as though the ending could have played out a bit more.  Friedkin takes a cop-out direction for the ending of the film and I just wished to see more.  Honestly, I would have loved if the film were two hours long just to create a more solid close.  

The Bottom Line:  This film is one the strongest directed and acted cat-and-mouse chase that I have seen to date!

Score: 9.8/10