Tag: Chuck Duncan

A bent take on the year in cinema You’ll hear a lot of different opinions about the movie year of 2017. Some people think it was an absolute crap year for film, some will point out the few truly great films of the year, and some will call it an average year. I’ll call it average. There were quite a few films I enjoyed (and for the record there are a lot of 2017 releases I’ve yet to see), but there were few films that fall into my “I’d watch that again” category. Some films unexpectedly caught me off guard, […]

Especially in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water After some big, big movies featuring Gothic horror (Crimson Peak) and giant robots battling giant monsters (Pacific Rim), director Guillermo del Toro returns to the smaller, fairy-tale films that first brought him widespread acclaim (think The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth) with The Shape of Water, a very unusual romance film.

Coco will fill your heart When Pixar isn’t making movies about toys, fish, cars, emotions or monsters, you can say their human characters have been pretty… white. Hoping to rectify that situation and add a bit more diversity to their films, the studio has put together their first movie featuring a full cast of Mexican characters and set the story during one of the biggest holidays in the country, Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. If you’re unfamiliar with the holiday, or just know about it from the cute decorated skeletons you see around Halloween, it is […]

Justice League doesn’t stun It’s finally here, the long-awaited joining together of some of DC Comics’ most iconic superheroes – Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, The Flash, Cyborg and… spoiler alert… Superman. And after some not very kind reviews for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Man of Steel and more glowing reviews for Wonder Woman, the question is can Justice League ever live up, or down, to anyone’s expectations, especially coming so closely on the heels of the almost universally loved Thor: Ragnarok? The answer is probably no.

Thor: Ragnarok delivers I’ve enjoyed the Marvel superhero movies over the years, but many have noted that the studio seems to be stuck in a rut with their films, following the same template over and over again. To be fair, there have been some great films (particularly the first two Captain America movies) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but so far there have been no real stakes because we know the heroes are going to be back for another adventure. And while the DC films from Warner Brothers have been criticized for being too unrelentingly dark and violent, the Marvel […]

Ignore the cheesy title, Happy Death Day is perfection There are a handful of people and companies that churn out low-budget horror films. James Wan, Jason Blum and his Blumhouse productions, and the folks at Platinum Dunes are the most prominent, and of that group and their high-profile titles, Platinum Dunes cannot hold a candle to the others even with the backing of Micahel Bay, churning out one cookie-cutter film after another and disparaging 80s classics like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Hills Have Eyes. Wan struck gold with the Insidious and The Conjuring franchises, […]

Battle of the Sexes brings back the 70s in style In 1973, the world tuned in to a TV spectacle – a tennis match. But not any old tennis match, this was one for the ages, the match that would prove once and for all that men were better than women that was dubbed the “Battle of the Sexes.” There were actually two of these matches in 1973, although the one that is the focus of the new movie Battle of the Sexes was the one that was a worldwide TV event (although the first one is also depicted in […]