In 2012, there was a little horror movie called Sinister that may have looked like throwaway horror fare, but was actually surprisingly effective and atmospheric.

Sinister was a 2012 offering from modern horror writer/director Scott Derrickson that focuses around a writer and his family being haunted by an ancient Babylonian deity.

Our main character is Ethan Hawke’s Ellison Oswalt, a one hit wonder true crime author who is trying his best to recapture the glory of his first book by moving his family into a house where a family was hung from a tree in the backyard. Hawke’s character is not generally a very agreeable person; he’s quite selfish and often puts his desire to recapture his former fame ahead of the wellbeing of his young family.

The film has great pacing, interesting cinematography, and a limited point of perspective that really adds to the claustrophobic feel of the movie. The fact that the story is told entirely from Ellison’s view point adds a lot to the suspense as very early on we feel for his wife and children and want to know what is happening with them, but we spend most of our time sequestered in the office with Ellison while he focuses on his research and blocks our a lot of what is going on around him.

The handful of characters that surround Ellison sort of feel like window dressing; his wife (played by British actress Juliet Rylance) is supportive in spite of her reluctance to go along with Ellison’s plans. His son, Trevor suffers from night terrors that really serve no purpose other than to add a cheap scare (and to remind us he is in the movie at all) and his daughter, Ashley likes to paint on walls and be ignored by her father. The real stand out for the supporting characters is the nameless deputy played by James Ransone, who serves as both a light-hearted foil to the movie’s very dark tone and a source of information that both we and Ellison come to rely on for the expository stuff. The deputy also serves as a foil to Hawke’s thoroughly unlikeable character as he’s very earnest and easy to identify with.

In a modern horror genre full of jump scares and torture porn, Sinister scares us by dropping us into a very dark room in a very long house and then fills the shadows with demons, ghosts, and scorpions and just allows our imaginations to do the work. At least until it’s time for the spirits to make their appearances in the light. The story pacing is great as the mystery is revealed to us through Ellison’s research and the ending is shocking without relying on any ridiculous twists or buckets of gore.

Overall, Sinister is a great ride with some terrific suspense and some scares, with some levity sprinkled throughout to keep the audience from becoming exhausted. It features a main character that we can get behind even if he is sort of a jerk. You want to see him get better and do the right thing for his family, but at each turn he hides what is happening to him from the people around him as he gets more obsessed with the mystery and his quest for fame. With a sequel coming up, I would wonder where they intend to take the story. Sinister is very self-contained and making another one feels very much like Hollywood cashing in on an original concept. Either way, the first one is a great movie to watch all alone in the dark — you’ll end up sleeping with the lights on.

We take a bullet for the team and see a movie made for the bro douche contingent — the big screen adaptation of HBO’s Entourage.

I always try to keep an open mind about the movies I watch; I firmly believe in seeing a film just to make up my own mind about it, even when I’m “pretty sure” the movie in question isn’t for me. Now, I won’t see everything (even if it somehow does have some sort of weird merits, The Human Centipede 3 isn’t something I’m eager to try out) but when faced with a choice, I like to give filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. I sat through Jupiter Ascending in the theater a few months ago because a buddy of mine wanted to go. I didn’t particularly care to see it before that day because it didn’t look like my type of movie, and the reviews weren’t good. But I figured, well, it might have something good that I enjoy. Hell, maybe it will even become a new camp classic! But it didn’t. It’s horrible. It’s laughably bad. But hey, I at least made up my own mind about it.

So, when I heard there were plans to make a feature film based on the HBO series Entourage, I was dubious. The show itself had devolved into a celebration of douchebaggery instead of a satirical indictment of young life in the Hollywood limelight. The final few seasons of the show had very, very few redeemable qualities, and I was in no rush to be among the white sunglasses-wearing crowd on opening weekend. But, when an opportunity for a free advance screening was offered to me, I accepted. “Maybe the celebrity cameos will be fun,” I thought. And, after all — I do like bright, shiny toys, loud music with bass, and beautiful girls in bikinis. Cameos, cars, girls, music – these were all staples of the HBO series, and they’re abundant in the film adaptation. But, something strange happened in the translation from ‘crappy season 8’ to what we have here — and it’s not half bad.

Sure, the movie is excessive — but it’s glossy excessiveness that looks great on the big screen, in a full-on-movies-only widescreen aspect ratio. All the characters and tropes were in place, but to my genuine surprise, the proceedings were carried out with a lot of fun. There’s a certain energy to the film that I couldn’t stonewall my way through, my predisposed attitude be damned. The stakes are as low as always, the dialogue is poor, and half of the jokes are misses. The characters are the same as we left them, and the movie quickly works to wipe clean any sort of ‘closure’ that wrapped the series up. So, yes — this is just one big fat episode of a show that started as something decent and broke itself down into uncreative drivel. But still, the Entourage movie would stand as the single best episode of the show’s final three years. Perhaps it’s damning praise, but to start at 0 and work your way up to a 4.5 is a pretty solid improvement. And few improvements like that are as unabashedly flashy and enjoyable to the senses as the eye and ear candy presented here.

Vince (Adrien Grenier) is the Hollywood leading man the show’s universe circles around, and not much as changed since we last saw him. Perhaps recognizing his own stagnant nature during another liquor n’ ladies party, Vince sets his sights on a new goal: he wants to star in and direct his next film. His manager/BFF Eric (a.k.a. E, played with affability by Kevin Connolly) backs him up and gets the funds from super agent-turned-studio-head Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), but the gang’s life of excess seeps into their business; they’ve gone over budget, and Ari is left with no choice but to try to squeeze a few more million out of a wealthy investor (Billy Bob Thornton) and his dim-witted redneck son (Haley Joel Osment). Vince’s brother, Drama (Kevin Dillon), is struggling with his failed career, and their buddy/driver Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) is struggling with winning over the latest beautiful girl to give him the time of day (UFC fighter Ronda Rousey, playing herself). So, there’s not a lot more here to invest in than the show would give us over four episodes. Does that plot warrant the big screen treatment? Not necessarily, but we got it anyway. So for what it is, the movie carries itself out surprisingly well.

There are countless cameos, of course, but most of them feel like the result of scraping the bottom of the D-list barrel. The performances are uniformly flat amongst the four bros, but at least Piven’s given a couple different twists for his character (praying, using meditation techniques) that he plays to some comedic highlights. Fans of the show — the true fans that loved it even when most of us thumbed our noses up at it — won’t be left wanting. Casual movie-going audiences would probably be best to steer clear altogether, because as a film it’s absolutely nothing special and not exactly what I’d call technically proficient. But for the curious ones who have enough bad memories to be mainly doubtful — why not give it a shot? It ends as quickly as it starts, but it’s an enjoyable time if you’re ok with knowing it’s not going to wind up as something special or memorable. I was genuinely caught off guard when the movie ended, probably due to its lackluster structure, but I’ll tell myself it was because I was just having such a good time with it. That’s a far better story to tell myself, before time passes and the sexy sheen of the film has faded and I’m just left wondering why they didn’t do something more.

Disney Pixar’s Inside Out proves once again that the venerable storytellers aren’t afraid to tackle some heavy themes and emotions with creativity, wit, and warmth.

In a theatre packed with kids and reeking of old baby spit-up, I saw Disney Pixar’s Inside Out with my boyfriend and his 11-year-old daughter. She is the same age as Riley, the protagonist of the story, and dealing with a lot of the same feelings. I hoped that watching Riley handle her family’s move from her comfortable hockey-filled life in Minnesota to the new, weird surroundings of San Francisco where pizza comes topped with broccoli might help the tween in my life express her emotions about her parents’ divorce and my presence in a newly restructured family. The first line of the movie is, “Do you ever look at someone and think, ‘What is going on in their head?’” I have asked myself this many, many times when my pseudo-stepdaughter transitions inexplicably from happy and giggly to quiet and sullen.

The genius of Inside Out is that is takes the entire emotional process and anthropomorphizes each of the major feelings into characters: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. We see the five working out of ‘headquarters’ inside Riley’s brain where they use their individual gifts (and by the end we learn that, yes, even the icky feelings are valuable) to help her navigate her life. Memories are made and coloured with whichever feeling was prominent at the time. Most are sent to long-term memory for storage, while some fade and end up in the dump. A few precious ones become part of her core memory, supporting her personality islands: Family, Friendship, Hockey, Honesty, and Goofball. Most of Riley’s memories are happy — a fact that irrepressibly perky Joy is not afraid to brag about — but when her family moves across the country, the five feelings find themselves with extra challenges and in the chaos, Joy and Sadness get sucked into storage along with Riley’s core memories. Riley begins acting differently and concerning her parents with only Fear, Disgust and Anger at the helm, as Joy literally drags Sadness along trying to return to headquarters and set things straight.

Like all of Pixar’s offerings, Inside Out provides plenty of genuine laughs for both child and adult mixed with a healthy dose of sniffle-inducing sad scenes. The emotions are the real stars of the movie and excellently voiced by Amy Poehler as eternally positive Joy, Phyllis Smith as despairing Sadness, Bill Hader as high strung Fear, Lewis Black as explosive Anger, and Mindy Kaling as haughty Disgust. Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan served their parts as the parents well, but the humans don’t have much to do in this story, which takes place mostly inside Riley’s head. Writers and Directors Peter Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen obviously did their homework on child psychology and managed to incorporate concepts like abstract thought and the feel-nothing nature of clinical depression into a story full of flashy, brightly coloured scenery and the kind of straight-forward, simple characters to which kids can relate.

There are big concepts at work here. The movie touches on the trouble with how we raise girls in our society and the way people who have never experienced depression treat those that struggle with it. Inside Out’s youngest viewers are probably not going to get much more out of it than some giggles at the goofy characters, but as they grow and watch it again and again, it is easy to see how a young person’s understanding of their own emotions could be re-shaped by this movie. I heard an interview with Pete Docter on CBC radio in which he related the story of a young boy who, after seeing the movie, finally took the plunge off the high diving board that he had been too afraid to try on numerous occasions in the past. “I just realized that Fear was driving,” he said, “and I asked him to step aside.”

I’m not sure how much the intricacies of the concept sunk in for the 11-year-old girl I was with in the theatre, but the 37-year-old man we both love sat beside us sobbing through most of the picture. The idea that all our emotions are valid and important is one that we adults need to be reminded of too. In the brief peeks into the heads of the people and animals surrounding Riley that we’re given, we see that everyone is dealing with Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust to varying degrees and each of us handles them differently.

He told us he’d be back, and he is (sorry, bad pun). Arnie returns to The Terminator films in this summer’s franchise reboot Terminator: Genisys.

In a summer loaded down with sequels to franchises we thought were long dead, this angry machine laden film had to walk in my door.

Ever since Terminator 2: Judgement Day came out in 1992, this franchise has had a rough ride. The first Terminator was an amazing, focused science fiction film with a noire bent. T2 is a much bigger, more garish action film but also helped set the standard for such films. That’s the difference between the eras of filmmaking each one came from. Excluding the short lived TV series with Summer Glau that was actually decent, the films that have followed in this franchise would have to work a little harder to be terrible. As such, expectations were low for this summer’s iteration.

Terminator: Genisys follows the path laid out in The Terminator. John Connor sends Kyle Reese back in time to save his mother from a Terminator sent back in time to kill her. This is the last ditch attempt by the vicious technocracy run by Skynet to stop the rebel leader before he’s born.

But this time things go a little different. Instead of rescuing her, Sarah Connor is waiting for Reese with an older T-800 and they save him from a T-1000. The entire timeline of the Terminator franchise is uprooted from there. Essentially, the filmmakers pulled the same stunt J.J. Abrams did with Star Trek and used its past to rewrite its future. Kyle Reese is roughly the same as Spock in this case. And this is the only context you will ever find me writing or saying those words when comparing Kyle Reese and Spock.

Critics have been overly harsh with this film. It has been accused of being convoluted and tiresome, which movies laden with time travel can often be. Frankly, it’s pretty easy to follow if you’re paying attention. If nothing else, Terminator: Genisys wrote their way out of the corner T2 put them in by negating the events that happened in it. We start in 2029, jump back to 1984 then forward to 2017, and the plot will move forward from there if sequels happen.

But regardless of any positive vibes, this movie is not another T2 or The Terminator. Nor should it be.

This is actually an enjoyable film. No one is suggesting that this is the barn burner, box office juggernaut of the summer. That would be Jurassic World. But it is a fun summer action popcorn flick. There are metal people with human skin, explosions, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Keeping in mind that it’s generally quite easy to pick apart the plots of time travel based films because of the paradoxes they cause, Terminator: Genisys is a heck of a lot of fun. There’s a scene where a super powered Terminator is chasing down Sarah, Reese, and their T-800. Arnie bails out of a helicopter to plunge through the one chasing him, the familiar Terminator audio moniker playing in the background.

And Arnie is solid in this film. If he’d been making films for the last several years instead of Governating, I would be tired of him. I honestly ended up missing the guy and I’m happy to have him back on the silver screen.

I am firmly of the belief that Genisys is getting a bad rap from critics because it does not live up to the standards set by The Terminator or Judgement Day. The thing is: they are right. But if you judge it by its own merits, Genisys is a fun popcorn flick with good action that is a vast improvement over more recent film offerings in this franchise. And it sets the stage well to give the franchise a chance of producing an even better film down the road.

Ant-man is our latest adventure in the Marvel Film Universe, and while it didn’t perform to expectations, Ian Goodwillie says it’s a still great movie.

When Marvel announced that they were going to do a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, critics and fans alike thought it was a long shot. Names like Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor at least have some name recognition. Star-Lord? Gamora? Groot? Yeah, not so much. Guardians of the Galaxy turned out to be one of the biggest movies of the year and was a breath of fresh air from the barrage sequels in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at that point.

If people were worried about Guardians of the Galaxy, can you imagine what they thought when Marvel announced Ant-Man?

In the comics, Ant-Man/Hank Pym is a founding Avenger alongside his wife Janet van Dyne/The Wasp, Iron Man, Thor, and The Hulk. But the MCU has left the duo out of the picture up until this point. Several movies deep and they finally introduce one of their longest standing heroes.

Ant-Man focuses on another person to hold the mantle, Scott Lang, played in this film by Paul Rudd. Michael Douglas portrays his mentor and creator of the Ant-Man tech, Hank Pym. The dynamic between the two was a subject of some speculation. Would they acknowledge Hank Pym as the first Ant-Man? Or would he just be the scientist behind the hero? The movie did it right by having Pym be the science behind Lang but also be the original Ant-Man, retired from his life of being a secret hero many years earlier. With something terrible on the horizon, Pym brings in Lang, giving him an opportunity to make up for his criminal past by taking on the hero identity Pym created. The story is interesting because it leads into the idea that there are other powered heroes in the MCU who have been around for a while but under the radar. This notion will help them greatly as they lead into movies featuring other characters like Doctor Strange.

Both Rudd and Douglas are excellent in their respective roles as are Evangeline Lilly as Hope van Dyne and Corey Stoll as the film’s villain, Darren Cross, a.k.a. Yellowjacket. Not shockingly, Michael Peña steals every scene he’s in as a member of Lang’s heist crew. And Judy Greer pops up in another blockbuster this summer after her turn in Jurassic World, oddly enough as a mom in both.

All these great performances framed by one of the more interesting MCU plots make Ant-Man a solid watch. This movie is funny when it needs to be, full of heart when it needs it, and has action in all the right places. It’s just a good movie.

Then why have critics perceived it as performing in a mediocre fashion at the box office?

Keeping in mind that this is a statement relative to the success of films in the MCU, Ant-Man turned in the MCU’s lowest box office opening weekend since The Incredible Hulk. Ant-Man is also just slightly behind Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor, all mediocre openings by Marvel standards. It was still number one this weekend but just barely beat Minions on its second week. This is by no means a failure, but keeping in mind that Avengers: Age of Ultron recently opened to an almost $200 million weekend it’s not surprising the producers were hoping for bigger. The question is why? And before you suggest it, the departure of director Edgar Wright had little to do with it.

First and foremost, the movie had weak trailers. Guardians of the Galaxy had some incredible trailers that were intriguing, engaging, and fun. Up until recently, the trailers for Ant-Man were kind of dull and that’s a problem when you’re trying to convince a lot of people who know nothing about the comic book character to go to the film based on it.

The other issue might be Paul Rudd. Keeping in mind that he was absolutely great in this role, many people have problems seeing him as an ‘action hero’ in this context. Seth Rogen had a similar problem when he starred in the Green Hornet remake, though Ant-Man is a much better film. Still, there are those who have an issue seeing him in this kind of role. Regardless, Rudd is funny and endearing, and comes across well in the action scenes.

Hey, Rudd and Rogen both starred in insect themed super hero films. Weird…

Problem number three is the complete lack of set up in any other film. Age of Ultron, whether you noticed it or not, spent a significant amount of time laying groundwork for the upcoming Black Panther movie. While it’s important they did that, it’s years away. Why not spend a few minutes setting up the movie coming out in a couple of months? Some reference to Ant-Man would have been extremely helpful. That being said, there might have been references I missed given how much is crammed into Age of Ultron. And why couldn’t Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Agent Carter help set up Ant-Man? There were a lot of missed opportunities within the MCU to build hype for the movie which might have boosted opening weekend interest.

Going back to the continuing comparison, Guardians of the Galaxy also did not have that kind of internal set up but it did have a superior marketing campaign and trailer series leading into its release. Ant-Man is a far better movie than its somewhat lacklustre push would seem to indicate.

All of that being said, the movie’s worldwide box office sits at about $114 million (at the point this was written) and the budget was $130 million. Ant-Man is unlikely to be a loss for Marvel and Disney. Right now, it’ll probably be in the range of several other MCU films gross-wise. It is definitely not a failure so all you doom and gloom naysayers can just keep predicting Marvel’s first film failure inside this coherent story universe. To be frank, I had more fun with this movie than I did with Age of Ultron. It’s a more focused story that once again took us down a new path away from the sequel driven MCU.

Ant-Man might not be the best film in the MCU to date but it’s also definitely not the worst by far. And even the worst film in the MCU is better than most comic book hero films.

If you haven’t watched it, go.

Say what you want about Hollywood super weirdo Tom Cruise, but he’s still cranking out some damn entertaining popcorn movies. Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation rocks.

Whether he’s directing, producing, writer, or cheering from the audience, J.J. Abrams’ win column got another check mark in it with the most recent Tom Cruise film. There’s pretty much only one way to put it…

Rogue Nation is a great action film.

Period.

Whether you’ve seen all of his recent films or not, Tom Cruise has been on a bit of a roll lately. The box office number don’t always back this up but Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol have all been great watches. Rogue Nation is a continuation of that thanks in no small part to the resurgence of practical effects in action films.

Movies like Mad Max: Fury Road and Rogue Nation are proof that fans of action films are tired of watching CGI characters “perform” amazing stunts and they want to see practical effects. You don’t need CGI to have a money making summer blockbuster. There was a point that it seemed that CGI was fully taking over for actual effects and stunt people, particularly if you were watching a fight scene in a Hobbit film. And then Tom Cruise had to go and ride on the outside of a flying plane six or seven times to get an amazing shot. He performs many of his own stunts, creating an aura of authenticity in Rogue Nation. Practical effects and stunts are key to this kind of filmmaking so it’s nice to see them make a return.

And they’re under use for the past few years might be a big part of why good action movies have been few and far between.

The cast of this film is rather fantastic, as well. Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames are back, both actors now having appeared in all five of the films. Simon Pegg is now in his third and Jeremy Renner has two under his belt. Alec Baldwin is in his first Mission: Impossible film but it’s unlikely to be his last.

Once again, the movie has a rotating female lead, this time in Rebecca Ferguson as disgraced MI6 agent Ilsa Faust. She was actually quite good as an agent comparable in skill and talent to Cruise’s Ethan Hunt. She would make a good addition to the team so hopefully she returns. And the franchise could use a stable female lead on the team alongside the cast of regular male characters already in place. The Bond-esque revolving door of female characters is more than a little tiresome.

Speaking of James Bond, specifically the next installation coming up this year named Spectre, there’s something about the evil group Ethan Hunt is facing this time around that is more than a little reminiscent of what Spectre has been described as. For Rogue Nation, The Syndicate is the anti-IMF organized to destroy/rule the world. And that’s kind of what Spectre is looking like in the new Bond film. Please keep in mind that opinion is based on trailers. We’ll see how it shakes down this Christmas.

Where do they go from here? There’s definitely room for more Mission: Impossible on movie screens so you’d have to imagine more are on the way. But can they reinvent a genre to keep it fresh? More importantly, do they need to?

There’s nothing groundbreaking about Rogue Nation. Nor should there be. The filmmakers in this one have done an amazing job of making the old school action formula work in a pseudo spy thriller setting. It’s been done but it’s always great to see it done well. The reality is that we’ve had a void of decent action films for a long time and movies like this are finally starting to appear. It isn’t silly or stupid but it’s also not trying to be more than it is.

Rogue Nation is exactly what you should expect from a summer action popcorn flick. And it delivers on that expectation.

There’s no point in reviewing the Fantastic Four, which has tanked yet again. But we’re going to talk about this not-so-hot Fox via Marvel property.

There’s no point in reviewing the latest attempt to make a live action film from Marvel’s Fantastic Four. There have been a few attempts to make the movie over the years, the lion’s share coming from Fox. And the 2015 iteration is not really an improvement.

Boring.

Tedious.

Glacially slow.

These are just some of the nicer words and phrases used to describe the movie. And the blame for this recent box office debacle is being thrown around thoroughly. The director blamed Fox. Fox blamed the director. Fans just want a solid movie to go to. The reviews. The infighting between studio and director. That’s all just noise. Why can’t the Fantastic Four just become a good film?

The reality is that their issues stem back to the comics. Around since the early 1960s, the Fantastic Four have been a big part of the Marvel universe on the page. But the last few years have been difficult, with low sales dogging the venerable franchise regardless of how good the comics, eventually reaching the point of currently having nothing new on the racks. Marvel has been accused of burying the comics to avoid promoting the movies. That assumes more than a few people were reading the comics in the first place and that more than 5% of people in the theatres for these movies has ever cracked a comic book open. The failure of the movies is, unfortunately, predated by the failure of the comic books. The difference is that the movies are failures on a much bigger stage.

There are a few key elements missing from the films that make the Fantastic Four the Fantastic Four.

First, they are not superheroes in the same way most filmgoers are used to. The Fantastic Four are adventurers, scientists, and explorers who find themselves drawn into superhero endeavors, sometimes almost against their will. When they do get involved, it’s generally out of a sense of obligation to friends and family. They don’t go out seeking combat and danger; it finds them. Their superhero identities are not secret and are quite public, to the point that they’re hero codenames are secondary. Their films’ plots frequently fall back to superhero film tropes that just don’t work in this setting.

This actually brings us to point number two, which is family. The Fantastic Four are a family, not a superhero team. Johnny and Sue are siblings. Reed and Sue are married. And Ben Grimm is Reed’s closest friend to the point of being a defacto brother. And if you’ve read the comics, you know the family is bigger than that. Reed and Sue have two kids. Other heroes like She-Hulk, Spider-Man, and Ant-Man are important parts of their world. And don’t even get me started on Namor’s absurd relationship with them. Hell, even Dr. Doom is a member of the family unit on some level though a more dickish one. Family bonds are at the core of who the Fantastic Four are and that has been lacking in every iteration of their films.

Point number three: The Fantastic Four were birthed from an era of old school monster movies and science fiction. Impossible tech. Stories that were both subtle and ludicrous at the same time. Nuclear fueled monsters big enough to tear down skyscrapers. The Fantastic Four had all of that plus a giant spaceman dressed in purple and pink who ate planets while traveling with a naked silver man on a surfboard. You catch glimpses of it in the films, more so in the comics written by the likes of Jonathan Hickman or Matt Fraction, but it’s just not enough.

Then there’s the whole Dr. Doom thing. He’s the monarch of a fictional country with an army of robots. He’s a super genius with a suit of armor. He’s also a pretty impressive sorcerer. Sounds pretty cool, right? SO WHY CAN’T THEY JUST DO THAT IN THE MOVIES?!?!? He’s one of the most classic, badass villains the Marvel Universe has to offer and they just can’t seem to portray him in a remotely interesting fashion on the screen. It’s like the filmmakers can’t resist f@#king with him.

So what does a good Fantastic Four film look like?

What this film needs to be is about the Fantastic Four as a family of scientists, explorers, and adventurers. And not an origin story. Start it at a point where they’ve been doing this for a while and have kids. Do not use Doctor Doom as the villain. Take a hint from Batman Begins and dig deeper into their rogue’s gallery. Try out Moleman, the leader of a subterranean world filled with mole people and giant monsters. It’s a place to explore with an antagonist. If Doctor Doom is included, it should be as an ominous force in the distance or as someone who actually assists the team when it serves his interests. You don’t need to explain everything, which is one of the reasons Guardians of the Galaxy is great; it just told the story and left it to you to figure out the details.

But the big path to success is to let Marvel take the reins on the franchise. The X-Men can survive on their own, away from the rest of the Marvel Universe, because they are a huge franchise with a deep pool of heroes, villains, and supporting cast members to draw on. The Fantastic Four does not, at least on the level of the X-Men. The Fantastic Four needs to be able to interact with other Marvel characters; their supporting cast is the Marvel Universe.

Spider-Man.

Black Panther.

Ant-Man.

She-Hulk.

Hulk.

Iron Man.

Namor.

Except for Namor, these characters are all in the film stable of the MCU. And not only would that bring the Fantastic Four into the MCU but also the few supporting Fantastic Four cast members Fox has the rights to. Who doesn’t want to see the Avengers face off against Galactus? Or Doctor Doom begrudgingly help in the upcoming face off against Thanos? And, more importantly, who doesn’t want to see the Thing fight the Hulk?

When it comes right down to it, the bad to worse series of Fantastic Four movies we’ve been getting have been missing a lot of key elements but none more so that the context of being in a larger story.

It’s time for Marvel’s First Family to come home.

Whether it’s Fox or Marvel, someone needs to make the first move and get this process going. It’s just better for everyone to bury the hatchet and work on making a franchise both sides can be proud of.

Look, we all love They Live, but wrestler and actor Rowdy Rodder Piper (Rest in peace) also made the cult film Hell Comes to Frogtown.

The 80s was a tremendous decade. It gave us the best cartoons, the funniest clothes, a larger than life wrestling personalities that would influence a generation, and a view of the future that either had us in flying cars and cities on the moon or crawling around a scorched, nuclear wasteland. The confluence of all these things occurred in January of ’88 with the cult film Hell Comes to Frogtown.

This hidden gem starred the late, great Rowdy Roddy Piper as the semi-titular Sam Hell, a former soldier who wanders the ruined husk that was once the USA in his search for a place where he can be at peace.

The world Sam travels is one that has been destroyed by what is referred to as both a nuclear and a biological war. A war that has left the vast majority of humanity sterile and thusly on their way to extinction. The government has fallen and has been replaced by a group of quasi-military, pro-procreation nurses called MedTec, whose mission it is to round up fertile men and women and see to it that they breed to ensure the survival of the human race.

Piper’s Hell is on Medtec’s radar because in his travels across the wastes he has left a trail of babies, so they want him for their breeding program. There is one catch in their plan however, as the mutant inhabitants of Frogtown have kidnapped the area’s cadre of fertile women and are planning to use them as sex slaves in order to propagate their own, slime covered species. Upon capturing Hell, the leader of the local MedTec nurses Sandahl Bergman’s Spangle harvests enough biological material from him that he becomes mildly expendable when compared to the women, so Sam is sent in to the mutant stronghold to retrieve the women.

Hell is not one to cooperate with what might amount to a suicide mission, however, and is unwilling to cooperate. To deal with the insubordination Spangle attaches a personal sized, electrically charged nuclear chastity belt to him to keep him from running off.

This all sets the stage for what is actually a really great ride through yet another B-movie version of an apocalyptic future where six foot frogs are the enemy. The performances are as campy as one could expect from a low budget, late 80s sci-fi flick that stars a professional wrestler, with nothing stellar but also nothing that causes fits of laughter. Piper’s Hell is especially believable as it is basically the character he played on television for a decade, minus the kilt.

The effects are a different matter. The frog costumes are fairly well done, but Jim Henson’s Ninja Turtles they are not. The image of a mutant frog man telling Hot Rod that he is, “one weird dude,” while subtly shaking his head to make the lips on his latex mask move will always bring a smile to my face. Add to that famous scenes like The Dance of The Three Snakes (which also has some interesting practical effects) or the scene where the frog torturer gets vaporised by an exploding chastity belt, and the movie gets pretty memorable.

In spite of the cheesy performances and the corny effects, Hell Comes to Frogtown is a great adventure through the pessimistic, yet strangely hilarious 80s inspired apocalypse. It has likable characters, a coherent if ridiculous storyline and a premise that is highbrow enough for an apocalyptic, sci-fi epic but is played in this case mostly just as a way to make sexual references and as an excuse to fit Roddy Piper with a samurai sword and an atomic chastity belt.

While They Live might be Roddy’s more famous and quoted work, Hell Comes to Frogtown is a great flick to enjoy a beer with some friends and remember a great name in the world of 80s entertainment.

R.I.P. Rowdy Roddy Piper.

Going back for a rewatch of Cameron Crowe’s Singles was a bad idea that reminded us why grunge imploded in the first place. Also, Poochie.

Cameron Crowe’s Singles rode in on the plaid shirt-tails of the grunge music boom. Though, with tracks from bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains, it was really the soundtrack that moved the needle of public consciousness. The movie was far overshadowed by the soundtrack. In fact, the film had actually been produced before the short-lived, far-reaching pop culture explosion that was grunge, but had gone unreleased until grunge became so big that the dummies at Warner finally just shoved it into the marketplace.

I hadn’t seen the movie since ’92 when it came out and I remembered not being particularly wowed by it. But I’d been hearing a bit about it lately in film podcasts, because of Cameron Crowe’s recent release Aloha, so I thought I’d give it a revisit. Turns out, this was a pretty bad idea. This movie was way worse than I even remembered.

The plot revolves around a group of people in Seattle in the early 90s, many of them living in the same apartment complex. Matt Dillon plays a grunge rocker (the members of Pearl Jam cameo as his band; apparently his wardrobe was Jeff Amendt’s actual clothing). Bridget Fonda is a dippy neighbor that is infatuated with Dillon. Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick play another fledgling couple.

Singles is lazy and contrived, with quite a few unlikeable and unsympathetic characters. Bridget Fonda is so cartoonishly insane that she crosses a line into being offensive to women. There’s a whole bit where she merrily pursues the idea of getting a boob job to impress Dillon, who she’s pretty much stalking. (How’s a coffee shop waitress going to afford a boob job out of the blue, anyway?) She definitely fails the Bechdel Test. That said, she’s the least of our worries. At least she’s still Bridget Fonda, a bit of a bright light on screen.

The real offenders are Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick. Don’t get me wrong, I like them both just fine, but you have to admit that charisma-wise, they are both stale, dry toast monuments to mediocrity, Scott especially. He’s soooo boring. I want to curl up and go to sleep when he speaks. And here is a movie where the steamy, sexy moments are love scenes with Campbell Scott and Kyra Sedgwick. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea. It’s about as sexy as rubbing two dirty old pieces of cardboard together. Perhaps those dummies at Warner weren’t dummies after all?

One of the worst mistakes though, is Sheila Kelley’s character. Her plotline really doesn’t start until almost an hour in. She appears on screen and you’re thinking, ‘wait. Who the hell is that? Did I miss something?’ She has a few scenes where she is trying to find love through a video dating service (look for a Tim Burton cameo, playing the director of her dating video, which is idiotic, by the way).

She doesn’t even end her own fucking story. Matt Dillon just pops on screen and says something to the effect of, “Anyway, she got on a plane and met some guy on the other side. End of story.” She feels like she was tacked on as an afterthought because they had a short running time. It’s symptomatic of this lazy movie. It’s choppy, and it feels like the script controls the characters based on what it needs them to do, versus them being alive with motivations and their own decisions. In the end, characters break up or get together based on almost nothing other than what the script knows the audience is expecting (I’d say ‘rooting for,’ but it’s hard to root for anyone here).

I remember what turned me off about this movie when it came out. It’s Poochie.  While it was about the cynical Gen X generation to which I sadly belong, it plays more like an exercise in marketing designed to bring out certain demographics. It’s a romcom for the ladies disguised as a happening grunge music movie for the dudes (I felt similar about sticking LeBron James in the recent Amy Schumer film Trainwreck).

These clashing demographic elements don’t balance well. The movie ends up feeling like it has very little to do with being about the music scene in Seattle and feels more like a relationship yakfest. Sure, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains are both in the movie, and Dillon plays in a band who have a song that is a riff on a Mudhoney track, but there’s so much groan-worthy blah blah blah, I love you, I don’t love you, blah blah blah.

Now, perhaps that’s not the movie’s fault. I thought it was supposed to be about the music, man.   But perhaps I only took what I wanted out of the marketing with the selective hearing that women accuse men of. If the movie wasn’t so damn bad, I could forgive the fact that it’s a Trojan Horse romcom. At least Reality Bites, which could probably be considered an imitator, was more subversive and funny.

Whether it’s inappropriate demographic fondling or just shitty writing, Singles’ legacy is that it’s a metaphor for what happened to the co-opted and imploded grunge scene en masse. I’d like to think that Crowe had better intentions than we can see up on the screen, as he did with Almost Famous, but I just can’t see the evidence. It’s the slickest kind of Hollywood shit that doesn’t dare to be inspiring in any way.

Note: Sheila Kelley died on the way back to her home planet.

The first Sinister movie was a horror sleeper that jumped out of the dark at us. Sinister 2 opens things up, but to its detriment.

Sinister 2 is the sequel to a 2012 Ethan Hawke picture (Sinister, duh) and while it is a serviceable flick on its own merits, it does a lot wrong that prevents it from being as good as its predecessor.

The atmosphere and cinematography that made the first movie such an effective little sleeper are back. The movie is dark and has a great feeling of dread, the ghosts and demon are all very well done, and the performances are all pretty top notch. James Ransone returns as the un-named deputy as he follows the investigation that was started by Ethan Hawke’s character in the first movie, following a trail of family annihilations in an effort to stop a child eating demon. He puts out a great performance from beginning to end. His awkward and introverted mannerisms work perfectly and really allow him to help build suspense just by being on the screen at the same time as the spirits and other scary things.

The plot of the film is a straight forward one, with the ex-deputy following the trail of bodies left by Buhguul and trying to break the chain and stop the murders. It is well presented and easy to follow, if you are familiar with the first movie. People who see this film without prior knowledge of part one will most likely be completely lost as the story continues forward as if there weren’t 3 years in between this film and the one made previously.

Shannyn Sossamon is the standard love interest for the now former Deputy So-and-So. She also puts out a stellar effort as a mother who is being followed by an abusive husband and has two young boys who are being lured into the shadows by an ancient Babylonian god.

Dartanian and Robert Sloan play the two sons of Sossamon’s Courtney. The boys are being haunted by some of the demon’s young victims (and are being shown the ‘snuff films’ that helped make the first film so haunting) in an effort to get one of them to perpetrate another grisly murder for the amusement of Bughuul, The Eater of Children.

The demon’s interaction with the children is something the film does right, but also feeds in to one of the biggest problems with the film: the mystery is gone. In the first Sinister the little girl chops up her family with an axe, seemingly out of nowhere, and it was a great ending for any horror movie. In this film, it seems like the filmmakers are doing a theoretical study on the nature of sadism and media violence. The two boys are being shown gruesome films in an effort to turn them into gleeful mass murderers, and it seems to work. If you do not buy into the theories on the impact of media violence, the children becoming killers seems to come out of nowhere and there is no other explanation given.

The snuff films themselves have also been ratcheted up to a level that could be called parody. They have gone from throat slittings and drownings to people being suspended above a swamp and being eaten by alligators. Knowing that these murders are all being committed by preteen children, the engineering logistics are enough to break the suspension of disbelief.

They also fall in to a trap many successful horror films step into, dropping hints that clearly state a sequel is in the future, leaving loose ends and showing there are multiple Bughuul murder chains going all over the world. There is even a character who has gone missing with no explanation, and in taking so much time setting up the franchise they have opened the scope of possibility, but taken away some of the claustrophobia that made the first one so thrilling to watch.

This opening of scope is the biggest thing that drags this film down, by focusing more on children who kill their parents on a farm, in a corn field, while they are hung on crosses, we not only lose the overall feeling and spirit of the first one, but it also starts to feel like a knockoff of Children of The Corn. Whether this was some kind of homage or just lazy writing, it takes an original idea and breaks it over the rocks in an effort to create the next, great horror franchise.

Sinister 2 is not a bad movie; it has great tension, terrific performances all around, and it’s very well made. But it falls short when compared to its predecessor, and since an intimate knowledge of said predecessor is necessary for understanding the plot, the comparison is one that must be made. It makes it very hard for this film to stand on its own merit.

If I were to rank my experience watching this film between, ‘a day on the farm,’ and, ‘having a rat burrow through my stomach and out my armpit,’ I would give it a solid ‘burning of an abusive stepdad on the cross.’ Which is to say it’s something that is great if you are already a fan; but for casual observers it might not make a whole lot of sense.

The Big Short is getting big praise. But is it a hackneyed film that tries too hard to riff on The Wolf of Wall Street?

“Okay, Chris. Pretty sure this guy has Asperger’s or something. So, I need you to let the audience know within the first three seconds just how very, very autistic he is. Okay? And, action…cut cut cut. I can’t believe I’m saying this to you of all people, but is it possible that you can go bigger? How about we get you a glass eye?”

What I assume was director Adam McKay’s direction to Christian Bale while shooting the obnoxious opening scene of The Big Short. The scene aims to earn a cheap laugh at the expense of Michael Burry’s [Christian Bale] lack of social deft. There’s no context for the character’s strange behaviour, and laughing at a character simply because of a perceived mental disorder feels about as appropriate as laughing at someone walking by with a limp. It’s the first of many tacky, poorly calibrated, and terribly unfunny scenes that ultimately pollute any of the film’s awkward stabs at dourness when recounting a financial disaster.

Adapted from Michael Lewis’ 2010 nonfiction book of the same title, The Big Short tells the story of a bunch of morally compromised individuals who made a killing by shorting stock on collateralized debt obligations [CDOs] – the home loan mortgage crisis that led to the financial collapse in 2008. It’s blatantly obvious that McKay wants to mimic the energy and style of The Wolf of Wall Street, so much so that he plunks Wolf star Margot Robbie in a bathtub to have her demystify some Wall Street jargon [more on this later]. But none of Wolf‘s energy, rich characters, or pathos McKay tries to desperately to emulate is found in The Big Short. It’s only true likeness, really, is subject matter.

The movie has a star cast, each turning in some of the most irritating performances of their respective careers. Steve Carell plays Mark Baum, an arrogant hedge-fund manager, whose full gambit of emotions seems to only include bewilderment, anger, and mild shame. Ryan Gosling plays the wildly unlikable and hammy Jared Vennett, also giving the movie a handful of cringey narration. The aforementioned Bale fuels autism into Michael Burry, a Northern California-based MD turned stock swap savant. Least inflated of all is Brad Pitt’s Ben Rickert – the only actor among among the four not thoroughly overplaying his role, and the sole character providing more than a crumb of human or moral decency.

The narrative arc of the film consists of each character figuring out that the demise of the American economy is a pretty great opportunity to cash-in. Naturally, it necessitates a great quantity of financial jargon, and McKay assumes he’s playing to an audience of dunces. As such, he employs a profusion of gimmicks to enliven a story that feels like it deserves a more considered approach. Clunky interludes for financial lessons taught by super-star celebrities [Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Selena Gomez] are intended to be a stylized and amusing one-off way to impart a bit of financial wisdom, but the scenes are invariably awkward, and come off as condescending. It’s undeniably lazy filmmaking; McKay’s hoping we’ll overlook the shameless exposition because we’re busy penguin-clapping for a beloved star cameo.

But the gimmicks don’t end there. Gosling is constantly breaking the fourth wall and explaining some facet of Wall Street goonery in a way that’s devoid of any charm or interest. It completely takes the audience out of the film, and, after this kind of narrative cheapness, makes it not so enticing to dive back in. McKay also regularly scraps together cultural markers; collages of pixelated YouTube clips, stock images, and other questionably relevant content [Basquiat is certainly one of the more important American artists in the last half-century, but does flashing one of his works capture a certain undeniable flavour of American culture at the time, creating a tangible sense of what life was like during a particular era? Absolutely not. But I digress…]. It’s a tired method we’ve seen a hundred times, but McKay’s sloppy use of it makes it even more stale.

After bumbling its way for an hour through these awkward gimmicks and strained jabs at comedy, McKay, thankfully, drops the schtick altogether and decides to dawn his serious hat. The shift in tone in drastic – so much so that it feels like each act of the film was directed by an entirely different director. Mark Baum and his team take a research trip to Florida, in which they meet a few bone-headed frat-bro/mortgage dealers, a stripper using her one-dollar bills to obtain multiple mortgages, and an assortment of other idiots. They learn that most of these mortgage-backed securities are utter garbage, and these nitwits are creating a housing bubble. So, they short them. But subtly isn’t McKay’s strong suit. The audience is now supposed to be privy to the epiphany that only a handful of Wall Street pigs had made. But predicting an economic collapse after meeting these kinds of bozos isn’t exactly a convincing stroke of genius – McKay paints it as a completely obvious consequence.

And yet [in possibly McKay’s most baffling decision], when the inevitable collapse happens, he decides to venerate his key characters, depicting them on the verge of guilt-induced tears as they’re posed to rake in millions. We spend huge chunks of time watch Baum rub his forehead in bewilderment as he discovers the corruption and greed of the banks. Yet, he only uses this information to exploit the looming catastrophe. There’s no ethics here, and making heroes out of the guys who profited from millions of destroyed lives feels just a bit nauseating.

For all of its defects in form and execution, I can’t deny that The Big Short has a pretty intriguing story. And it does, if only momentarily, consider the ethics and implications of exploiting the financial collapse. In the film’s most impactful scene, Brad Pitt chastises his two young associates for celebrating as the economy begins to crumble – McKay thankfully reveling in a moment of thoughtfulness. A few other scenes near the end breezes through families devastated while the big banks get bailouts from the taxpayers’ money. It’s sort of too-little-too-late to start framing the event through an ethical prism, but gives you just enough to question who the bad guys are in all of this, and wish, for the movie’s sake, there had been more scenes with this kind of considered approach.

Callen Diederichs is a filmmaker and manager at Saskatoon’s amazing Roxy Theatre. He weighs in on film with is his best movies of 2015 list.

Each year, Callen Diederich, a manager at The Roxy Theatre and a filmmaker in his own right, gives us his list of the movies he liked best for the year.  He always some gems most people missed that are worth checking out.  Without further adieu, heeeeeeere’s Callen!

I am a movie lover that lives on a backwater planet on the Canadian prairie, which means that one must make some accommodations for lists like these.  Some films from years past only made it to where I am this year, and a lot of this year’s most-buzzed films haven’t yet — some never will.  (Plus, I try to avoid the multiplex, so if a film has only played there, I haven’t seen it).  And thus, I bring you a random best of movies list that you simply HAVE to see.

Inherent Vice

A rambling, mumbly, silly mess of a film, with the weight of the 60s crushing compassion and rebellion out of our drug-addled hero. Shotgun casting, lazily formalistic cinematography, affecting soundtrack, and miles deep subtext help to confirm PT Anderson as the Master (groan) of contemporary American cinema.

Duke of Burgundy

In theatres at the same time as that other film about BDSM, this Groundhog Day meets Fassbinder black comedy takes an infinitely deeper look at negotiating power dynamics, throws in a bug fetish, and presents it with pan-European dash and striking sound design.

Jauja

An Argentinian western starring Viggo Mortensen speaking his native Danish, it starts out odd, gets deeply weird, before finally going down the rabbit hole to another dimension. Filmed using an archaic photochemical process, it’s also the best-looking movie of the year.

Clouds of Sils Maria

The rare film where the trailer doesn’t only not give away too much, but actually performs misdirection, which enhances the meta quality of the proceedings. Assayas again proves his adeptness both at defying genre and in crafting female-centric storytelling far beyond the low bar of the Bechdel Test.

Ex Machina

Do Androids dream of seducing humans so they can get the hell out from under their control? That’s the case in this day-after-tomorrow film, which starts as a theoretical exploration of artificial intelligence and ends as a gripping indictment of misogyny. The conclusion to an accidental trilogy with Her and Under The Skin?

Macbeth

Performances, cinematography, and score create a perfectly controlled tone of increasingly demented doom. More surreal and poetic than Polanski’s, but no less nihilistic (that’s a good thing).

Hard To Be A God

With frequent snot-blowing, public urination, and head wounds, this is not a dinnertime film. But it is one of the most singularly realized films I’ve seen in ages: constant-motion long takes in black and white follow scientists from earth’s future trying to bring the renaissance to a parallel earth stuck in the dark ages due to repressive politics.

White God

Beyond its dyslexia-baiting title is an unconventional love story, a family melodrama, a furry apocalypse, and some of the best animal-wrangling in cinema history.

While We’re Young

See Adam Driver play a villain more frightful than any Sith Lord-wannabe: an opportunistic hipster narcissist. And yes, I’m revealing my identification with the middle-aged curmudgeon protagonist.

Winter Sleep

That a 3 1/2 hour movie, whose plot could be explained in a drunken text, would be less of an endurance test and more of an existential event is testament to the skill of this Turkish auteur.

What We Do In The Shadows

I expected this film to be dumb fun, which it definitely was — the funniest of the year. But I wasn’t expecting the nuance of the characters, inventive art design, and even some genuine pathos. Plus, my vote for Petyr as best character of the year.

Far From Men

A beautiful and timely road movie, and the 2nd alt-western on this list starring Viggo, this time playing a French national in ’50s Algeria charged with taking an Arab to his death. The rare film to focus on faith, friendship, and a ‘choose life’ message with no sentimental dross.

Time Out Of Mind

A less confident director would’ve tried to milk every ounce of pathos and melodrama from this story of a homeless, mentally ill man trying to reconnect with the daughter who hates his guts. But by using creatively framed dolly shots, a literal and metaphorical space is created around the characters to give a resonance much deeper than mere pity.

Steve Jobs

Far more interesting than the film’s accuracy as a biopic is its dissection of the relationship between capitalistic technocracy and a certain type of male ego, and its formal rigor: the entire film takes place at product launches, using different film stocks and digital mediums to delineate the time periods, with a Greek Chorus of his victims and accusers.

Roar

With no plot, characterization, or acting to speak of, this re-release from ’81 about a family trying to cohabitate with dozens of wild tigers, lions, and leopards never ceased to entertain me for a second. Plus, I learned that elephants are the douchebags of the animal kingdom.

It was a good year (other honourable mentions): Victoria, Diary Of A Teenage Girl, It Follows, Queen of Earth, Slow West, Nasty Baby, The Assassin, Love and Mercy, Wild Tales, Phoenix, Faults, End Of The Tour, Room, Hungry Hearts, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, MM:FR, SW:TFA.

The movies that inspired George Lucas to create Star Wars — and the properties that were created in the wake of its massive international success.

Film lovers think of Quentin Tarantino as the guy who draws from a lot of other influences to create his movies, while George Lucas is viewed as a filmmaker that harnesses an imagination full of original ideas. The truth is, while both men have vision and imagination, Lucas mines the movies of his youth for films like Indiana Jones and Star Wars just as much as Tarantino. I mean, C3-PO sure looks like the robot from Metropolis, no?

On the flipside, when Star Wars was released in 1977, it changed not only the movie business and how people thought about blockbusters, but it also spawned a Star Destroyer hanger bay full of imitators. Both audiences and producers were clamouring for content that was full of space, aliens, lasers, and mystical mumbo jumbo.  (Some critics might argue that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is also riffing too heavily on the original).

So let’s take a look at a handful of movies that inspired Lucas to make Star Wars, followed by a list of properties that were pretty much shameless rip offs of our favourite space opera.

MOVIES THAT INSPIRED STAR WARS

The Hidden Fortress

It’s worth noting that Lucas was trying to create a modern myth, so he also studied the writings of mythologist Joseph Campbell. But in terms of films, one of the major influences on Star Wars was Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 period film about a general and a princess in feudal Japan, trying to fight their way to freedom with two bumbling peasant sidekicks in tow. While it is a simplification of some of the characters we ended up with, Tahei and Matashichi are obvious prototypes for R2-D2 and C3-P0, and we see much of the action from the POV of these plebeians.

Flash Gordon

The filmed serials of his childhood were inspiration to Lucas when writing Indiana Jones, and the same was true Star Wars. In fact, he tried and failed to get the rights to the 1936 serial Flash Gordon, so he just appropriated what he needed. From locations like Cloud City to aesthetics like the opening credit crawl, Lucas borrowed heavily from Flash.

The Dam Busters

1927’s Wings was the winner of the first Best Picture Oscar, and one of a group of war films that featured warplanes in realistic dogfights. Combining aerial stunts with explosive action, these movies became the template for the X-Wing battles that thrilled us in the 70s. The Dam Busters has the distinction of having a major part of its story lifted, namely, the scenes where the pilots take turns pulling bombing runs, a la Luke and the Rebels vs. the Death Star. “Get set for your attack run,” is at least one line of dialogue that appears word for word in both movies.

Casablanca

While Han Solo didn’t own the Mos Eisley Cantina, it sure looks a hell of a lot like Rick’s Place from Casablanca. And Rick himself, the reluctant hero, sure seems a lot like Han Solo. Both films also feature characters trying to pay to charter a flight out of the joint (and the cost was 15,000 in both!).

The Adventures of Robin Hood

Errol Flynn’s dashing scoundrel feels like a cross between Han Solo and a sword-swinging Jedi Knight. And Carrie Fisher’ performance as Princess Leia definitely has shades of Olivia de Havilland’s Maid Marion (though Havilland’s accent doesn’t come and go like Fisher’s). But beyond that, Robin Hood is one of the most swashbuckling movies in film history, at least, until the invention of light sabers.

MOVIES / TV THAT WERE INSPIRED BY STAR WARS

Battlestar Galactica

It’s probably fair to mention that Glen Larson supposedly had the idea for Battlestar Galactica well before Star Wars was released, but it was only in the wake of the venerable sci-fi epic that companies started green-lighting content that cashed in on “this whole outer space thing.” So, technically, this wasn’t a Star Wars rip off, but it probably wouldn’t have existed without Skywalker and company.

The Black Hole

Most likely after seeing the toy sales from Kenner’s Star Wars line, Disney finally gave in and took a shot at their own space epic, The Black Hole. It’s a weird movie with a sloppy tone; cool, dark sci-fi in places, but a toy commercial in others. It’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it, but it won’t replace Star Wars in your heart.

Battle Beyond the Stars

B-Movie mogul Roger Corman just had to get in on the action, by lifting everything he could from both Star Wars and Kurasawa’s Seven Samurai. Though it was made on a shoestring budget, it’s actually the most expensive movie Corman ever made, and you can see it’s special effects shots used in later movies (and as a side note, they were directed by a young James Cameron).

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin

Starchaser: The Legend of Orin was one of the first animated movies to mix traditional animation with CGI (and one of the first to be released in 3D). While the animation actually looks pretty cool in a Ralph Bakshi way, this is a movie the New York Times called, “such a brazen rip-off of George Lucas’ Star Wars that you might think lawyers would have been called in.” It’s probably the worst offender, and animation aside, one of the worst movies to come from the Star Wars age.

Krull

This one leans into fantasy, and is perhaps not as swashbuckling as some of the other imitators, but it features a wise aged mentor, an evil Beast (Darth Vader), a princess that needs to be rescued from him, and Slayers (Stormtroopers) that lay waste to anything that crosses their paths. That said, it probably has the distinction of being one of the few Star Wars clones that can stand on its own power and doesn’t hold up too badly today (you know, for an 80s fantasy epic with a giant mystical throwing star).

Originally published in Punch Magazine

We round up a bunch of the smart film lovers and writers that we know to talk about the best and worst films of 2015.

In addition to some of the reviews and Best of 2015 lists we’re posting now that it’s 2016, we’ve also rounded up most of the excellent writers and critics we love to talk movies with. The assignment was to give us a little blurb on their favourite movie of the year, as well as their runners up and least favourites. Keep in mind that we are still seeing some of the best movies of the year roll out, so this list may change for everyone by the time March rolls around and we’ve been able to see everything.

Special thanks to the writers and critics that found the time to be heard, and we hope you discover a movie or two you might not have watched otherwise.

Jorge Ignacio Castillo

Vancouver Film Critic’s Circle / Planet S Magazine / Prairie Dog Magazine / The Canadian Crew.com

My favourite movie(s) of 2015:

#1) INSIDE OUT: Not only does Inside Out have a strong plot and powerful emotional content. It has the capacity to change the way you think. How many movies can say that? This movie is so brilliant, turning complex mental operations into abstractions; few have noticed Inside Out is gender fluid-aware. This one is for the ages.

#2) 45 YEARS: (Granted, it’s a festival movie that hasn’t officially arrived to theatres): This film slayed me. It’s a slow, simmering drama enhanced by spectacular performances by Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling as an old married couple re-evaluating their relationship. It’s an adult drama made of loaded silences and pauses, the kind of movie we don’t get much anymore.

Worst Movie(s) of the Year: So many: Hot Tub Time Machine 2, Fantastic Four, Project Almanac, Taken 3, Pixels, Terminator: Genysis

Dave Scaddan

The Feedback Society

Note: You can read Dave’s Top 20 Albums of 2015 here.

 My favourite movie of 2015:

THE REVENANT: I may just be committing the childish fallacy of saying the last film I saw was the best film I saw, but really, when I think about it, The Revenant wasn’t worse than anything in 2015.  It reminds me of two of my favourites from the last two decades: P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood and Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man.  If you like either of those films, there’s no way you’re coming away disappointed with this one.  The Revenant boasts Leo in a role he’s actually well-suited for (which doesn’t always happen) and Tom Hardy as such an expertly played villain that he will make you hate him (Nurse Ratched-style) in the next two films you see him in.  Unless the next film you see him in is Legend, in which case you’ll get a hate hangover two-for-one.   There’s an expansive early shot in this film that’s so lengthy and intricate that it makes Scorsese’s backdoor Copacabana shot look like a Drake video.

Runner Up: The Assassin

Worst Movie of the Year: Star Wars: The Force (read: Farce) Awakens. Full disclosure, I haven’t seen the new Star Wars, nor do I plan to.  I started boycotting this shameless toy-commericial-in-disguise long ago.  Maybe it’s great.  I wouldn’t know.  I just hate its presence.

Adrien Begrand

PopMatters / Decibal / NPR / Terrorizor / The Feedback Society

My favourite movie of 2015:

I can’t decide on a favourite single movie from 2015, so I’m going to cheat and say the best films I saw were all risk-takers. Gaspar Noé’s Love is a beautiful, explicit-but-not-exploitative, imperfect, profound attempt to capture what he calls “sentimental sexuality.” Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is both a glorious exercise in self-indulgence and a blunt portrait of America’s downfall, featuring an Ennio Morricone score for the ages. Jason Banker’s beautifully surreal Felt examines misogyny and rape culture with compassion, humour, and anger, featuring the gifted Amy Everson. Alex Garland’s Ex Machina examines the irony of gender identity in a dominantly male society, all in an inventive sci-fi storyline. David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows proved that a sense of dread is far scarier than any gross-out CGI, in addition to bringing the John Carpenter/Goblin-style synth score back into fashion.

Runner(s) Up: More cheating! What a year it was for crowd-pleasers that actually pleased me: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mad Max: Fury Road, Inside Out, The Martian, Trainwreck, Straight Outta Compton

Most Underrated Movie of 2015: Tomorrowland

Nathan Raine

Planet S Magazine / Prairie Dog Magazine / The Feedback Society

Note: You can read Nathan’s Top 10 Movies of 2015 here.

My favourite movie of 2015:

P’TIT QUINQUIN: It’s sort of a mini-series, therefore sort of a cheat, but screw it. Quinquin was the only thing I saw all year that I would confidently call a masterpiece. Dumont has been cinema’s foremost trafficker of grim, but his newest effort trades in his trademark bleakness for muted comic absurdity and deadpan humour. Quinquin follows two incompetent cops, in a rural French community, on the trail of a serial killer who leaves body parts stuffed inside of barnyard animals. It’s completely unconventional in its use of nonprofessional actors and its strange focus on the distorted human figure. And, of course, Dumont uses the murder investigation to muse on his favourite subjects of God and man’s inherent capacity for evil. It sounds serious but these themes merely trickle through an amusing adventure story following a bratty young boy and a bumbling investigator. It’s poignant and disarming and bizarre and hilarious and disturbing, and for my money, is the best thing I’ve seen all year.

Runner Up: Mommy

Most Annoying Film of 2015: The Big Short

Tyler Baptist

CFCR’s Reel to Reel, Videonomicon

My favourite movie of 2015:

GREEN ROOM: Tense, white knuckled, and pulse pounding. That was me, physically, sitting in — no — gripping the theatre seat while watching what ended up being my favourite film of the year, Green Room. Hot off the heels of the already tightly wound tension of Blue Ruin, writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room manages to wind the audience up even moreso when a touring punk band takes a last minute gig to pay for gas at a neo-Nazi clubhouse and things go very, very, very wrong. A masterpiece of a siege movie with smartly written characters, actions and re-actions firmly planted in reality, and featuring Patrick Stewart in a role you’ve never seen him in, Green Room is a grueling roller coaster ride that will leave you out of breath.

Runner Up: The Tribe

Worst Movie of the Year: Area 51

Dan Nicholls

VanCity Buzz / The Feedback Society

My favourite movie of 2015:

STEVE JOBS: Brilliant, maddening, enthralling, off-putting, and straight up impossible to look away from. To some, that would well describe the man Steve Jobs himself and probably this criminally underseen masterpiece — from director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin — of the same name. Michael Fassbender leads the proceedings fearlessly in what at times could pass for a cinematically delectable stageplay. As the titular Apple maverick, Fassbender switches dancing partners between a uniformly stellar cast including Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen, and Michael Stuhlbarg. It’s as breathtaking as it is unconventional, as heartfelt as it is intellectual, and it eschews past and future expectations of biopics. In my books, Steve Jobs is the film of 2015.

Runner Up: Sicario

Worst Movie of the Year: Terminator Genisys

Mallory Weiss

CFCR’s Reel to Reel

My favourite movie of 2015:

LOVE: My favourite film of 2015 was Gaspar Noe’s latest heart wrenching flick, Love.  This film revolves around two main characters — Murphy, a film student, and his partner Electra, an aspiring artist.  When Murphy gets another woman named Omi pregnant, his already tumultuous relationship with Electra is compromised — possibly forever.  Murphy and Electra’s relationship is shown through unsimulated sex scenes that truly show their unique and mostly unhealthy emotional relationship.  I gripped my pillow, I bawled, I rolled my eyes — sometimes all at once.  A much more relatable film than Noe’s previous film Enter the Void. I believe that it’s a must see for all open-minded cinephiles.

Runner Up: Girlhood

Worst Movie of the Year: Green Inferno

Craig Silliphant

The Feedback Society / CTV News / CFCR’s Reel to Reel / News Talk 650 CKOM

My favourite movie of 2015:

TANGERINE: My favourite film this year was Tangerine, which inhabits the world of transgender prostitution in Hollywood on Christmas Eve.  It was shot on iPhones, but this was no gimmick — the movie looks beautiful, capturing golden California skies and the kinetic action of the film. The characters inhabit a sometimes rough world, but the movie finds a certain classic, hilarious screwball humour in their adventures. Tangerine was unique, but recognizable, and gives you a window to a world you probably don’t often see. It works on a snooty art film level, but it was also one of the most fun times I had at the theatre this year.

Runner(s) Up: The Revenant, The Lobster, Mad Max: Fury Road, It Follows, Love

Worst Movie of the Year: Fantastic Four

We need Spike Lee to say things that others aren’t willing to say, but we also need him to do a good job of it.

I have no reason to want to hate on Spike Lee. I probably try harder to love his films than I do with most directors, simply because he’s so unapologetic, using the form to create and transmit what’s on his mind, what’s on a lot of people’s minds. So it gives me no pleasure to say that Chi-Raq, his latest feature about gun violence and the radical means needed to end it, is a really bad film.

I usually agree with Spike Lee. Two years ago when Django Unchained was met with almost universal praise, Spike was the only one saying what I felt about it, even though I mostly found the movie entertaining. Something about it didn’t seem right. Even though Django had dignity, even though the film’s script pulled no punches with the true-to-life savagery of its villains, even though the movie has a righteous ending, it just didn’t seem like it should be QT’s story to tell. Spike said all this without even seeing the movie, and yet I still felt he was right. Turning slavery into a template for gaudy action/adventure entertainment, no matter how skillfully done, is not something a non-black artist — if anyone — should do, and I’ll admit I feel guilty for having been entertained by it. Of course, all Spike really accomplished was to give Django even more hype than it already had, and he must have known this, being so good at the hype game in his own right. But he just couldn’t help himself, and that’s why we need people like him, to keep speaking their minds and showing the real side behind the fantasies that cost us more than we can afford.

This month, Spike went up against some legendary box office competition with a film so ambitious, I almost love it for daring to be as bad as it is. Chi-Raq is a modern-day revisualization of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, a story about a sex strike organized by women to end the senseless warring amongst their men. It has dance numbers, musical interludes, documentary-style reporting about the state of emergency in Chicago’s poor neighbourhoods, and practically the whole script is written in rhymes. It’s a throwback to his second film, School Daze, in that it tries to be part performance music video, part film, and also a throwback to his first film, She’s Gotta Have it, in that it’s really all about sex.

Chi-Raq has all the skillful earmarks of Spike Lee’s best: it’s unapologetically opinionated and brash, it’s full of passionate speeches and makes powerful use of still imagery, but the writing — and some of the performances — take plenty off of the table. The rhyme scheme thing, in keeping with the Greek classic it’s based on, is often beyond Spike’s means, and costs the film a lot of relatable potential. He’s got a great cast here, and Angela Basset, John Cusack, and Samuel L. Jackson deliver one really great scene each, but the weaknesses of the writing, the rhyming, and the pacing turn the whole thing into a ‘laugh at, not with’ farce, which is not what you want when you’re on the hunt for political and social change. To put it another way: Spike forces so many rhymes at the ends of his couplets, that his troupe of masters seem more like his muppets.

Chi-Raq actually sabotages an almost-decent second act with indefensible pacing. The film takes a full half hour just to establish its overly-ambitious premise, that gang violence in Chicago is so out of control that its women need to impose a “no peace, no pussy” ultimatum. Then, the implementation of this sex strike is handled in about three minutes during which the audience is treated like it has no intelligence whatsoever. The ban just happens, with no focus on the intriguing hows and whys, turning the film into a very frustrating experience, then a masquerade, then a sanctimonious poem to the American public. It’s highbrow in its concept, but lowbrow in its looks, it wants to be Aristophanes, but it’s low grade Mel Brooks.

What Lee doesn’t realize is that he doesn’t need gimmicks to make great films — his eye, his style, his balls, are greater assets than any gimmick could ever be. Funeral song-and-dance routines shouldn’t inspire mocking laughter with their overblown schmaltz, films about the clout of empowered female sexuality shouldn’t objectify women, and portrayals of violent, terrifying thugs shouldn’t be left to actors who are obviously pansies more at home on Americas Got Talent.

Nick Cannon, in the lead role as the title character, is a total fiasco. His performance, trying to sell himself as a fearless, gang-dedicated, trigger-happy kingpin/street rapper is one of the least believable leads I’ve seen since watching Leo DiCaprio (at about 75 kilos and sweet as a lily) try to portray old New York’s most ruthless streetfighter in Gangs of New York. Spike Lee has Cannon almost constantly shot with a blunt in his hand or his teeth, and he overplays his puffing so badly that he ends up looking like a nine-year old with a sucked-down lollipop stick pretending it’s a smoke. Even in a hip-hop context where men who are essentially fashion models regularly expect us to believe that they are hard, bad men, Cannon comes off soft. When he cries a single, meant-to-be-riveting tear at the end of the film, (in an “I am your father” climax lifted from the likes of The Empire Strikes Back) it is only moving because it is funny. He should stick to hosting talent shows while draped in silky sleekness, where being a heartthrob sissy is an asset, not a weakness.

In terms of aiming for high art and comic entertainment, Chi-Raq really wants to be Dr. Strangelove, but ends up more like National Lampoon than Stanley Kubrick. Comedy and poetry can be among the most powerful artistic vehicles for sparking change, but they need the skills of high art to do so, and those skills just aren’t consistently in place in Chi-Raq. Spike’s message is noble — innocents and confused youth dying from bullets that no one ever seems to see fired is a tragedy, and a grave reminder of our shockingly eroded human values. But when that message is conveyed in such weak art, when these truths are spoken in such an unaligned, garish way, it threatens to cheapen the message.

How about a couple of unnecessary sequels to a totally unnecessary reboot? Is there anything worth watching in the I Spit on Your Grave franchise?

In the world of unnecessary sequels there are two types of films: the first are the ones that you watch and end up hating yourself for wasting your time watching such garbage. And the ones you think are going to be trash and end up being welcome additions to the story. In the case of the sequels to I Spit on Your Grave, we have one of each.

1978’s I Spit on Your Grave was an unbelievably controversial exploitation film that had people up in arms over its graphic depiction of a 20ish-minute rape scene. Not to mention the gruesome revenge of the assaulted woman as she slashes her way through her attackers. The 2010 remake ratchets up all the things that had people raging against the original, including a more graphic rape scene, a crooked cop, and much more graphic, Saw-like death scenes during the third act revenge. As controversial as both of these films were, they were self-contained stories with beginnings, middles, and endings and while the endings were a little vague in both versions they didn’t leave any unanswered questions. That being said, I was blown away to discover that there exists not one, but two sequels.

I Spit on Your Grave 2 was released straight-to-video in 2013 and it is an example of a film that tries to suck you in by trying to one-up everything that made the first film noteworthy, namely, the graphic rape and the subsequent ultra graphic revenge. How do you one-up a 20-minute rape scene? You have a 5-minute rape scene that includes a brutal stabbing that the victim is forced to watch, followed by a kidnapping (more on that in a moment), which itself is followed by a 15-minute rape scene that involves urine, a cattle prod and a dirty basement.

Aside from the sexual assault, the premise itself has been ratcheted way up. In the first film, all of the action happened around a very small lake community; the sequel is set in New York and after the initial attack it moves to Bulgaria. Bulgaria — you read that right. After the attack the girl is drugged, stuffed into a trunk, and then put onto a commercial airliner and flown all the way to Eastern Europe. There, she can be part of the supra-lucrative sex trade. Once she has been taken advantage of by the kidnappers, (who have taken the time to kidnap an American girl and transport her thousands of miles in order to sell her to rich freaks), they decide to bury her alive in the basement.

Following her improbable escape from her own grave, the girl lives in the sewers for what seems to be weeks before she takes revenge upon her attackers in way that can only be described as improbable. One of which includes rubbing rat poop into open wounds in order to encourage infection.

I Spit on Your Grave 2 is the perfect example of a sequel that not only doesn’t need to exist but is wholly vicious and cruel. It’s only purpose is to make you feel uncomfortable and angry, not only because of the subject matter, but because of the sheer impossibility of virtually every situation is simply an insult to your intelligence. How did they get her to Bulgaria? How did they kidnap her from a police station? How did she survive weeks in a sewer with no food, a broken leg, and several open wounds? All are questions that you will not care to answer because the movie is so awful that you will want to forget it the moment its 100 minute runtime finally comes to an end.

Contrast that with 2015’s I Spit on Your Grave 3: Vengeance is Mine. I watched them back to back. After number two, I was expecting this movie to make me regret literally every choice I have ever made in my life that led me to Vengeance is Mine. However I was pleasantly surprised with what was presented here. It seemed that the film makers heard all the criticism levelled at the first one and set out to make a sequel that, while still being totally unneeded, at least adds to the story and is a fun little slasher flick in its own right.

We catch up with the woman from the first film (Jennifer Hills) who has changed her name and moved to the big city in an effort to move on with her life. She is taking counseling and even joins a rape survivors support group where she befriends a disturbed young woman who feels that the rapists who go unpunished deserve justice. While haunted by visions of violence and having been clearly pushed past her breaking point, Jennifer does not believe in using violence to solve problems until her friend is again assaulted and killed (off camera). This sets Jennifer off on a rapist-slaying rampage where she lures people into attacking her and then flays them in the streets. It is a terrific, gore-stained movie with heavy psychological overtones and a likable cast of characters that we care about. It features a climax befitting a movie of this surprisingly high calibre.

I Spit on Your Grave 3: Vengeance is Mine is the perfect example of an unnecessary sequel that does most everything right. While it really has no reason to exist it is still a great ride that takes us away from the uncomfortable violence of the original and into a more comfortable slasher flick that is played for fun, rather than to make you salivate for bloody revenge and then make you uncomfortable with the silliness of the violence. I won’t spoil it here, but it also has one of the single greatest one-liners ever committed to film.

The original I Spit on Your Grave was a film that made a lot of people angry, and justifiably so due to its graphic depiction of some very taboo subject matter. The sequels made a whole new generation of people angry by using that same subject matter as a setup for a Saw movie, but at least in the end we got a movie that is thoughtful, lots of fun and doesn’t use sexual assault as a tagline.

Controversial shooting methods seem to have paid off for director Alejandro Iñárritu, with his new film The Revenant. Maybe we’ll see an Oscar for Leo?

What once spat venom, the saggy orifice of Hollywood is now, almost uniformly, discharging a steady glob of watery bile. Those most insipid, perhaps, are the action and adventure films. Gone are the days of Coppola leading a drug-fueled expedition into the heart of darkness, putting his cast, crew, and a slew of locals through virtual war before emerging from the jungle with a cinematic tour de force. Gone are the days of Herzog and Kinski trapped for months on end in some remote location, determined to come out with a masterpiece or kill each other trying. Today, we have green screens, unions, safety regulations, rigid schedules, actors with trailers furnished with heated toilet seats. Why scale the mountain when we can shoot in front of a green screen at a lot across the street from a Starbucks?

To pull off this kind of film now, the visceral, soul-consuming sort that immerses you in a world where you’re conscious of the agony endured both in front of and behind the camera, you need an asshole of a director whose only priority [despite pressure to be on time, be on budget, be safe, be kind] is what happens between “action” and “cut.” Alejandro G. Iñárritu is just that sort of asshole.

Re-teaming with camera-god Emmanuel Lubezki, Iñárritu’s The Revenant is a beautifully captured portrayal of brutality, determination, and suffering — none of which, reportedly, were in short supply during production. Reports had crew members and a producer abandoning the production, complaints of unsafe working conditions, a hugely engorged budget and schedule, and even rumoured scuffles between Iñárritu and actor Tom Hardy. By all accounts, it was “a living hell” to shoot, the director accused of being uncompromising in executing his vision [shooting exclusively with natural light in the Albertan Rockies likely not help things either]. But if the results are any indication, we’re all better for it, because The Revenant has a profusion of that thing Hollywood has long been missing: verisimilitude. That vague sense that what we’re watching might be infused with some truth; that the action and suffering on screen might not just be performed, but felt. It allows us an immersive experience, something not unlike live music in the way we can respond in an instinctual, human way. This is the glorious note that The Revenant manages to hit, not for a brief moment, but for nearly its entire duration.

The Revenant, in its waste-no-time beginning, opens with a band of trappers ambushed by a tribe of Pawnee. The brutal chaos of the battle is captured in a series of unbelievably fluid long-takes by Lubezki’s signature gravity-defying camera: he threads us through a flooded woodland and into a clearing at the mouth of a riverbed, arrows and guns shots firing in every direction, the camera vacillating from trapper to Pawnee. We have yet to establish any spatial orientation, and the sudden ambush feels like a force of nature in itself — death can strike from anywhere when you’re surrounded by the storm.

It feels like Iñárritu must have opened with his most potent scene, yet from there the ferocity only grows. But his critics [and I’m certainly not one of them] lament this very tendency. He has a habit of piling-on; dragging characters and audience alike through relentless emotional or physical pain, his films becoming something you inevitably endure. For me though, perhaps appealing to my inner sadist, I’m never put off by Iñárritu’s heavy hand, and once again, with The Revenant, he’s guilty as charged. The audience barely has time to recover from the ambush before thrown into the [soon-to-be] infamous grizzly scene. Hugh Glass [Leonardo DiCaprio] finds himself between two waddling bear cubs and the grizzly mother. The filmmakers are patient with the brutality, moving at the lethargic pace as the bear toys and mauls Glass within an inch of his life. The scene is one of the many examples of Lubezki’s masterful aesthetics. He moves the camera slowly and uncomfortably close to the action; the bear panting and fogging the lens, resting her gargantuan paw on Glass’ skull, shredding his flesh with her razor claws, are all comprised of long, unbroken shots, Lubezki refusing cutaways to grant the audience any amount of relief. It seems, after the opening deluge of violence, as if Iñárritu and Lubezki are daring both Glass, and audience, to survive the nightmare.

The heart of the story consists of Glass’ struggle to survive, despite his ever-worsening conditions. After the mauling, the other members of his band forced to move on, Glass is left in care of his half-native son, Hawk, [Forrest Goodluck], a young trapper [Will Poulter] and John Fitzgerald [played by the wonderfully garbly Tom Hardy]. Fitzgerald, who proves not to be the greatest makeshift nurse, fixes to leave Glass for dead, and ensures he’s without any resistance from Hawk. It’s a world without room for humanity — murder and scalping are just an everyday thing. To survive, and ultimately seek vengeance on Fitzgerald, Glass must scrape together an unconscionable amount of willpower. He is fuelled by retribution for not just his son, but as we learn in a series of Malickian flashbacks, prior travesties committed against his murdered wife and family. Fitzgerald seems to represent he who took everything from him, and Glass deserves the vengeance he craves.

Perhaps what’s most impressive about The Revenant is the amount of realism that Iñárritu and Lubezki achieve despite a somewhat contrived narrative. The filmmakers never lose control over the audience or the jolting pace of the film, creating a constant flourish of commanding, awe-inspiring images to tell it. It’s also strengthened by DiCaprio’s performance, who is as committed as we’ve ever seen him. DiCaprio gets buried alive, sinks his teeth into raw animal flesh, ducks into an icy river to escape death, and even strips naked to dive into a tauntaun/horse for the night. Glass is wracked with pain for nearly the entire film, and we feel every gash and wound that inflicts him. He seems to recover from his cornucopia of ailments in super-human time [one of my only problems with the film], Iñárritu acknowledging the conceit in a spiritual/bodily healing experience in a cobbled together sauna. But I’m more than willing to accept an expedited recovery in exchange for narrative progression. And, it speaks to the ever present willpower Glass displays — how physical pain can be repressed, even ignored altogether, through the will to stay alive. It gets at the brutal nature of survival, and although Glass hardly speaks, his slow transition from rotting compost to vengeful ice warrior is, thanks to DiCaprio’s commanding performance, a thoroughly compelling one.

Equally as commanding is Tom Hardy’s Fitzgerald, a man himself victim of some inhuman crime, though, contrasting DiCaprio’s Glass, Fitzgerald seems to have lost a bit of is own humanity. This disparity becoming one of the major themes of the film, Iñárritu oscillating between moments of compassion and intimacy [the snowflake moment one of the film’s most moving] to moments of intense cruelty. Breaks in the insanity give us short, poetic interludes, Lubezki’s camera finding nature’s beauty amidst man’s savage ugliness. Wolves hunt a pack of wild buffalo, moose huff as they cross an icy river, dream sequences connect Glass with his family — these moments feel supernatural, and show some sort of serenity, balance, and restorative quality found in the wild.

The Revenant is harrowing stuff, and Iñárritu seems solely concerned with creating a visceral, immersive experience. It’s film that doesn’t let you look away, that punishes you for the few times it lets you catch your breath. Of course, Iñárritu will face a barrage of criticism from the gadflies that circle anything with award-season success. Some will have a distaste for how big it goes, arguing that the masses will mistake extravagance for greatness, and in turn will translate a payoff with little golden statues. But Iñárritu’s motives don’t feel indulgent here [something he may have been guilty of in Birdman]; all the excess and insanity serves the narrative, he only want to blow the bark off the tree. It might not be a masterpiece, but its worth all the blood, sweat, and tears that were shed both in front and behind the camera.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice is a murky, messy, CGI porn extravaganza, but it’s nowhere near as bad as some critics and fans think.

The hype leading up to this movie was lacking, especially in comparison to Deadpool or Captain America: Civil War.  Except for sponsored content or pieces posted by online pundits, social media newsfeeds were all but bereft of Batman v. Superman chatter. People were nervous leading up to this one. DC’s film history in the past few years has not been the best, barring a couple notable exceptions. Combine that with a lackluster marketing campaign and this movie had bomb written all over it.

And depending on who you ask, that is the case. Critics are panning it. A significant portion of fans seem to love it. But when fans and are critics are divided, who is wrong? When it comes to Batman v. Superman, the answer is simple.

Everyone.

Wait. Or is everyone right?

That might just be a perspective thing.

Lowered expectations can play mind games on you. Most people going into this one were not expecting great things, particularly after an at best mediocre Man of Steel. The bar was not high for Batman v. Superman. But you have to give credit where credit is due in that it did at least clear that bar.

First and foremost, let’s talk about the casting elephant in the room. Ben Affleck made a great Batman for this movie. The Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale version was pretty much just a ninja dressed as a bat. He lacked the intelligence and strategy the Batman should bring to a situation. He’s more than a fighter with some cool toys; he’s a thinker. Affleck’s Batman is the strategist and thinker he should be without losing the intensity, gadgets, or combat skills. And Jeremy Irons plays Alfred to Affleck’s Bruce Wayne brilliantly.

After Affleck, casting Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman earned the film’s producers almost as much ire from fans. But like Affleck, Gadot killed it. She was tough, intense, bad ass, and regal, everything you should expect from Wonder Woman. And this film successfully put me in full anticipation mode for her upcoming movies.

And then there’s Jesse Eisenberg as Luthor, one of the movie’s biggest conundrums. Jesse plays the part he is given to perfection but this version of Luthor strays too far into Joker territory with his scheming. He is less an imposing and devious figure lusting for power, and more of a violent lunatic burdened by his own genius. This Luthor is annoying at best. The issue here is that it’s hard to condemn Eisenberg for this as he didn’t create this iteration of Luthor but he did at least do it well.

One of the biggest fears going in was that like The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Avengers: Age of Ultron before it, Batman v. Superman was just going to be a series of trailers for all the movies they plan on making while being bereft of its own plot. While there is some of that going on, Batman v. Superman does it in a more organic fashion that fits the story of this movie. The act of introducing Flash, Cyborg, and Aquaman was far less intrusive and distraction than expected.

That being said, this movie still just barely has a plot.

Batman v. Superman, like too many superhero flicks, is unnecessarily long. There is at least 30 to 45 minutes of tedious filler that could easily be cut out without detrimentally impacting the film. Things don’t really get going until the fight kicks into high gear. A prime example of this is Batman’s CrossFit training montage. We know he’s tough and in great shape. Why do we need to see this? No amount of beating a tractor tire with a sledgehammer is going to make you as strong as Superman or more effective in the fight.

Another odd choice was to go without scenes in the credits or after them. This is a holdover from a previous DC movie director who did not look too kindly on the practice. But there are two scenes that stick out like sore thumbs that would have been better used in this capacity; Batman’s “Knightmare” and his final confrontation with Luthor.

To be honest, the Knightmare scene in particular has proven to be quite confusing for people who don’t know DC Comics well.

All these two scenes really do is set the stage for future movies, adding little to the plot of this one. They would have served both the film they are a part of and the future of this big screen universe better in the credits. Doing so would have been less distracting when engrossed in this movie. There is a place in film storytelling to for mid-credit and post-credit scenes. Having these scenes where they are just muddies the plot.

Batman v. Superman is a typical Zack Snyder film in many ways. It’s a loose collection of scenes that look amazing but just barely hang together on what you could charitably call a plot. It drags along for a while, then suddenly kicks into high gear with frenetic action combined with liberal doses of slow motion. There is just barely a beginning and end to this story, and the ultimate goal of characters involved is convoluted if there at all. Luthor, in particular, seems to be piecing his “master plan” together as he goes, hoping that the players involved don’t look too closely until it’s too late.

Ultimately, Batman v. Superman is a really long first act for the upcoming Justice League film. But it’s reasonably well-executed first act with some amazing action sequences and great performances that sets the stage for the next wave of DC films. If you’re going see it, do so in theaters otherwise a lot of what makes it work with be lost.

Batman v. Superman is not a bomb and it’s not the best movie you’re going to see in 2016. Just go see it and enjoy it exactly as it is.

Summer’s first at bat, Captain America: Civil War, knocks it so far out of the park, it might be tough for anything else to compare.

Just a little over a month since two mammoth superheroes were pitted against each other in a dark fight to the finish and now here we are again, with two more top tier characters — Captain America and Iron Man — duking it out in the name of justice. Given that everyone’s still bummed out by the bad memories of Batman v Superman resting so recently in our minds, one would be forgiven for having significantly lowered expectations for the next big great hero mashup. But rest assured that Captain America: Civil War has a word for your expectations, and a punch to the face, and an emotional body slam as well. It’s perhaps the most flat-out fulfilling comic book movie since Marvel’s The Avengers (2012) and the most thoughtful since The Dark Knight (2008).

Following the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron, everyone’s favorite team of superpals is under increased scrutiny regarding the collateral damage their heroic acts leave behind. Another unfortunate incident ends with more innocent victims. The governments of the world become officially fed up with the unpoliced actions of The Avengers and the “Sokovia Accords” (named after the country left demolished at the end of Ultron) are introduced with intentions to keep the heroes in check.

The biggest supporter of this act, surprisingly, is a guilt-ridden Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr., which should go without saying). The Accords’ strongest opposing voice belongs to Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans). Take two alpha heroes with a bevvy of powerful friends on each side, give them stringent philosophical opposition, and then let the fireworks fly. And when things pop off with this group of comic book folks the silver screen erupts with a steady and healthy flow for almost the entirety of the film’s two and a half hour running time.

The thematic quandary, “Who watches the Watchmen?” has been addressed many times before in many superhero movies (including the aforementioned BvS). What the filmmakers are working with here isn’t exactly anything new that’s going to plunder the depths of the human mind and soul to arrive at some newfound revelation. But that it arrives at a place so pensive and introspective is a profound pleasure. As far as popcorn entertainment can, Civil War has its cake and eats it too.

It’s a battle between the head and the heart. We’ve got Tony, all genius and wit and logic and strategy. And in the other corner there’s the perpetual underdog Steve, whose moral center may have been tested in the years since he became Captain America, but he’s always remained true to himself. As Cap struggles with his complex feelings towards his old friend Bucky, a.k.a. the brainwashed Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), the audience also questions if maybe Cap’s feelings are getting in the way of a larger problem. Where Cap, Tony, and the surrounding characters find themselves in regards to this fight feels natural and true to the personalities we’ve grown to know and love over the course of a dozen Marvel blockbusters.

Directing duo Joe and Anthony Russo have to be given respect for keeping the movie paced and balanced. There’s a lot of ground to cover here, and a lot of characters to be given their dues, and yet it never feels like too much. Any doubt about the pair’s ability to keep the train on the tracks with the upcoming two-part Avengers: Infinity War pictures has more or less vanished, provided the script is worthy of their talents.

The soon-to-be-famous Leipzig airport sequence is a new classic in the history of the genre; if you’re a true fan of any number of these combined characters you might have chills running from head to toe (I know I did) from the geekgasm on screen. It might be early but it would also be a relatively safe bet to claim that this sequence goes down as one of the most talked about of all of summer 2016’s blockbusters. You’ve got Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Winter Soldier, Falcon (Anthony Mackie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and last but not least, Spider-Man (Tom Holland) all throwing down together at once. And every one of those characters gets at least one amazing moment to take center stage and shine. It’ll make you giddy.

It’s a small slight that we’re asked to make a few too many leaps of faith in regards to the Winter Soldier’s arc. Despite being at the center of the storm, the Bucky/Steve relationship feels like it doesn’t quite get to 100% on the logic or emotional fulfillment levels. The internal turmoil faced by Scarlet Witch is also largely dropped by the end of it all, but we’re left with the implication that the character’s deeper soul-searching isn’t done yet. Minor concessions made in the name of an epic scope and army-sized cast are forgivable in proportion to the film’s bigger themes and agenda.

The filmmakers do not have a dog in this fight. It is ultimately Cap’s journey and he is at the core of the film but in the battle between Cap and Tony, the people behind the camera keep it fair and balanced. Characters’ allegiances shift, as do the viewer’s.

Anyone hoping to be entertained on a solely surface level is going to get more than his or her money’s worth. Where does Marvel go from here? One can only imagine. Perhaps they’re going to embrace their quirky side for a while, with Doctor Strange and Spider-Man: Homecoming just around the corner. A few expertly crafted light-hearted flicks could be a nice palette refresher before the two-part madness of Avengers: Infinity War puts an end to any peaceful truce once and for all. The events of Civil War may or may not be forgiven by each and every character, but they will undoubtedly not be forgotten.

What happens to your life after you’ve been possessed by evil demons and carried out a murderous rampage? Ava’s Possessions aims to answer that question.

Have you ever watched a movie where someone is possessed by a demon and then they run amok all over town, eating people, having sex with hookers and generally spreading terror in the community? Those movies usually end with the possessed party being exorcised and going on their merry way. But what really happens to them? In a lot of cases, these possessed people have killed others and committed some serious felonies. Is there no comeuppance for these people? Do they just go home and eat a burger and then go to work on Wednesday and never have anything happen?

2015’s Ava’s Possessions answers these questions, by being a movie that takes place after a woman (Ava) has been exorcised. It turns out these people are given three options: they can go to trial, they can go to the loony bin, or they can attend a support group for people who have been possessed but are recovered and continue that until the group leader deems them fit to be released into society.

Not a bad option, all things considered.

The movie follows Ava as she tries to put her life back together and complete all the homework assigned to her by the group leader. She makes amends with her family members, whom she terrorised and mutilated over her month long possession. She tracks down the people she hurt in an attempt to apologize to them. These attempts are met with various degrees of success, with some people running in terror, other attacking her, one guy starts stalking her and a pimp who speaks entirely in the third person tries to shake her down for money owed.

As Ava works her way towards freedom from her spiritual visitor (the d-word is not allowed) she discovers that were was more going on in her missing month than she realized. People are stalking her, someone else is trying to kill her, and a disproportionate number of people are trying to have sex with her. It all culminates in a pretty well executed double twist ending that both entertains and satisfies.

The plot, characters, and execution of the story are less impressive than the subject matter that the flick tackles however. Just the fact that someone made a movie that takes place in the generally uninteresting aftermath of exciting events is pretty cool. Often when this is done, if is a sequel that ends up being a crappy rehash of the first movie and the survivor either relapses into possession or is killed off early as a huge middle finger to the audience.

The mystery involving the stalkers and the murder are actually far less interesting than the scenes where Ava is trying to go back to her old life. She tries to go back to work, but feels her coworkers are being insensitive to her ordeal and treating her possession as a joke — it’s clever and not something you see every day. The scenes where she makes amends with her family -her mom in particular, whose eyeball Ava gouged out- and friends who were understandably uncomfortable around her were also great as they shine a light on what the real impact a full on demonic possession can have on someone’s life. Work, friends and family are all altered due to supernatural circumstances and Ava’s Possessions presents them in a very thought provoking and entertaining way.

It is not every day a silly quasi-comedy horror flick leaves me considering the nature of my favourite genre, but this one did the job. It was really cool to see a thoughtful and detailed view of what the possessed would have to go through in order to get their lives back. It is significantly deeper than just showing someone in an asylum, drooling thorazine all over themselves or showing up as a born again. It really puts a fun spin on what would happen to your life if one of the many dukes of Hell took up residence in your soul and caused you to embark on a hedonistic and murderous rampage.