Episodes

Nov. 3, 2016

Doctor Strange (2016) Benedict Cumberbatch – Movie Reviews

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as New York-based neurosurgeon, Dr. Stephen Strange, a big shot at his profession with as big an ego to flaunt, a level of cocky, self-satisfied smarm not too dissimilar to Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Iron Man films. His job is, literally, in his hands, until a car accident occurs that leaves him without much use of them for surgery purposes, causing him to go into an emotional and psychological tailspin if he cannot figure out a solution. Western med...
Nov. 2, 2016

Hacksaw Ridge (2016) Mel Gibson – Movie Reviews

Mel Gibson’s film loosely showcases the true story of small-town Virginia resident Desmond Doss and his heroic actions as an American soldier fighting in the Pacific against the Japanese forces during the waning days of World War II. Doss, a devout Seventh Day Adventist and believer in pacifism, enlisted into the Armed Forces because he believed in the fight, even though he wished to help out without the need for killing the enemy on the other side, trying to go through basic training retaining ...
Oct. 26, 2016

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) Mike Flanagan – Movie Reviews

Set in Los Angeles in the year 1967, we find a widowed scam artist named Alice, who is working from home as a spiritual medium to make ends meet for herself and her two misfit daughters, fifteen-year-old Lina and nine-year-old Doris. Inspired by a new ‘board game’ of sorts that has spooked Lina and her friends, Alice decides to incorporate a Ouija board into her flashy seance showcase, but things take a weird turn when it ends up that the device seems to actually be a portal into the spiritual ...
Oct. 24, 2016

Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016) Movie Reviews

The plot involves the Dynamic Duo trying to take down their main four nemeses — Joker, Riddler, Penguin and Catwoman — who’ve joined forces to capture a Replicator Ray. which is a laser-gun of sorts that can make an exact replica of anything it targets. Despite falling into the right hands, those with wrong hands still manage to manipulate matters to their benefit, resulting in a major upheaval in the city of Gotham that could have long-ranging consequences if the good guys can’t figure out how ...
Oct. 23, 2016

Inferno (2016) Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones – Movie Reviews

The third film in the Dan Brown adaptation series that already includes The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons sees Tom Hanks return to play main Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, who we find at the beginning of the story waking up with a head injury in a hospital in Florence, Italy. Langdon can’t remember how he got there, or much of anything else in recent memory, but someone apparently wants him dead, causing a hasty escape, with his British doctor, Sienna Brooks, who just so happens to be...
Oct. 21, 2016

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) Tom Cruise – Movie Review

Tom Cruise returns as Reacher, who travels to Washington DC to meet up with the attractive Military Police officer Major Susan Turner, only to find that she has been discharged from duties and has been arrested for espionage in connection with the killing of two American soldiers in Afghanistan. What’s worse, Reacher also becomes a suspect linked to the murder of Turner’s defense lawyer and gets apprehended. Sensing a frame job from within the military itself, Reacher and Turner have little choi...
Oct. 18, 2016

The Accountant (2016) Ben Affleck – Movie Reviews

Ben Affleck stars as the titular accountant, a highly functional autistic savant and skilled fighter/gunman named Christopher Wolff, who currently has an office at a strip mall that fronts for his real business, and a lucrative one at that, as the under-the-radar forensic accounting wunderkind who helps save major businesses, governments, and underworld figures willing to pay an exorbitant price. His latest client is a famed roboticist named Lamar Black, who wants the accounting dynamo to go thr...
Oct. 12, 2016

The Girl on the Train (2016) Emily Blunt – Movie Reviews

Emily Blunt stars as lonely, alcoholic divorcee Rachel Watson, who spends a part of every day commuting on a train, looking at the goings-on in a couple of homes that happen to be along the suburban New York route. One of those homes happens to be her former residence, where her ex-husband Tom, who Rachel has yet to get over as evidenced by her persistent drunk dialing and texting to him, is inhabiting with his new wife Anna, and their newborn child. Another home, just a couple of houses down, h...
Oct. 8, 2016

Birth of a Nation (2016) Nate Parker – Movie Reviews

Nate Parker’s Birth of a Nation is based on real-life events that occurred in Virginia in 1831, where a slave named Nat Turner would lead a revolt against the white slave-owners. The film showcases how Nat went from Africa as a child to the cotton plantation of the Turner family, growing up picking in the fields, but very unique among the slaves there because he could read. His chosen book was The Bible, eventually learning to preach with the guidance of a relatively generous mistress of the hou...
Oct. 6, 2016

Lo and Behold (2016) Werner Herzog – Movie Reviews

Filmmaker and documentarian Werner Herzog continues his fascination with the current state of the planet Earth and its inhabitants with Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, which seeks to show how the internet has changed the way human beings live and perceive one another, with advancements in technology that has been of great benefit to us all, while at the same time been a source of pain and angst for many others. Directing and narrating the piece, Herzog offers these reveries, thes...
Oct. 3, 2016

Deepwater Horizon (2016) Mark Wahlberg – Movie Review

Deepwater Horizon depicts the events leading up to and during what would eventually become the worst oil spill in the history of the United States, where the titular drilling rig, the largest in the world at the time, would explode under massive amounts of pressure in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven of the 126 people on board, just 52 miles off of the coast of Venice, Louisiana, on April 20, 2010. A burst of methane gas trapped over three miles below the ocean surface blast up the well, event...
Oct. 2, 2016

Queen of Katwe (2016) Oyelowo, Nyong’o, Disney Movie Review

Phiona Mutesi, who we see growing up in Katwe, in the crime-ridden slums of Kampala, capital of Uganda, with a future ahead of her that seems to offer more of the same for her and her family. David Oyelowo co-stars as Christian missionary and youth outreach coordinator Robert Katende, who discovers a hidden prodigy in Phiona when he gathers some of the local children together to teach them the game of chess. Phiona gets very good, very quickly, soon enough besting all of the kids in Katwe, leadi...
Oct. 1, 2016

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – Movie Review

Asa Butterfield stars as Jacob, an American teenager close to his grandfather, Abe, who would frequently impart his fanciful stories of his own youth spent at the peculiar home of the story’s title. The home is run by Miss Peregrine, who caters to orphan children who possess strange and magical traits (one has bees living within him, another with a mouth on the back of her neck, another with the strength of ten men, etc.). When his grandfather passes, Jacob determines to find if Abe’s stories ab...
Sept. 26, 2016

Complete Unknown (2016) Rachel Weisz – Movie Review

Michael Shannon plays Tom, celebrating his birthday at a critical time in his life, wondering what to do when his Persian wife is on the verge of moving from their home in New York to California to continue her education and help in her passion to make jewelry as a career. At the party, Tom’s workmate Clyde brings over a guest, Alice, a new acquaintance he hopes will eventually be more. We know what the guests of Tom’s party does not, thanks to an opening montage: this stranger has had many iden...
Sept. 25, 2016

The Hollars (2016) John Krasinski – Movie Review

A man’s mother whas been discovered to have an advanced-stage brain tumor that needs immediate removal, with John Krasinski playing the role of bored office worker and would-be graphic novel author John Hollar, who moved to New York and is currently awaiting the birth of a baby with his well-to-do girlfriend, Becca. He receives a call to return to his Midwest home to be there for his mother Sally’s risky but crucial brain surgery, where he is greeted by his financially struggling plumber father,...
Sept. 23, 2016

The Magnificent Seven | 7 | (2016) Denzel – Movie Review

Set in the year 1879, this new version moves the action from feudal Japan and Mexico to a struggling new town called Rose Creek, who are being bled dry and forced to leave or die from a ruthless and iron-fisted land baron named Bartholomew Bogue, who is looking to continue amassing riches by getting rid of themeek residents of the town to further set up his gold-mining operation. When Bogue’s attempts to terrorize the people of Rose Creek into leaving turn deadly, recently widowed Emma Cullen se...
Sept. 18, 2016

Snowden (2016) Oliver Stone – Movie Reviews

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Edward Snowden (doing a reasonable interpretation of his voice and demeanor), a neoconservative wanting to serve his country but whose military career is cut short due to frequent injuries, turning his sights to working to help is country in another capacity though a career in government intelligence. He proves to be more than adept at this job, which allows him to climb the ranks to higher and higher levels of security clearance within the CIA. However, the closer ...
Sept. 17, 2016

Blair Witch (2016) Callie Hernandez – Movie Reviews

As with the first film, we’re greeted with a title blurb informing us that what we’re about to watch is footage found in the woods of Burkittsville, MD — aka, the Black Hills Forest. We see the beginnings of the footage at the home of a 20-ish aged man named James, who has seen a YouTube video that gives him a clue that his sister Heather, who has been missing since trying to document the origins of the Blair Witch, may be still alive in those woods. Embarking on this quest, James seeks the assi...
Sept. 17, 2016

Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) Renee Zellweger – Movie Reviews

Bridget is now 43 years old, alone and still living in the same flat in London — no husband and no children — working as a producer for a London televisions news program. On the urging of a friend and colleague, Bridget is cajoled into attending an outdoor music festival where people can expect to get laid, and often, where she soon meets a charismatic and good-looking American dating-site wunderkind named Jack Quant, with whom she decides to “have relations.” About a week later, she runs into h...
Sept. 12, 2016

Little Men (2016) Greg Kinnear – Movie Reviews

Jake is an artistically gifted but introverted 13-year-old kid whose therapist mother Kathy and actor father Brian relocate from Manhattan to Brooklyn when they take over the abode of the recently deceased father Brian barely spoke to anymore. The properties inhereted also contain a modest dress shop run by a middle-aged Chilean immigrant named Leonor, who also has a son, Tony, around the same age as Jake. Tony quickly befriends actor-in-training Jake, but difficulties arise between the two fami...
Sept. 11, 2016

Other People (2016) Molly Shannon – Movie Review

The film takes place over the course of a year, with the primary focus being on a struggling comedy writer and improv comedian named David (Plemmons), returning to his hometown of Sacramento from New York to look after the needs of his terminally ill mother, Joanne (Shannon), uncomfortably reuniting with his mostly estranged father, Norman (Whitford), who has yet to fully accept him since coming out, and two mostly annoying younger sisters. The family is preparing for the inevitable life after J...
Sept. 10, 2016

Sully (2016) Tom Hanks – Movie Reviews

Sully is a docudrama that tells the story of the events surrounding the water landing in the New York’s Hudson River for a commercial jet en route to Charlotte piloted by veteran Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger on January 15, 2009. The Airbus A320 lost both engines after flying into a large flock of Canada geese turing takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, causing Sully and co-pilot Jeff Skiles to have to make the quick decision on whether they could make it back to LaGuardia or a nearby airstrip, or if ...
Sept. 5, 2016

Equity (2016) Anna Gunn – Movie Reviews

Naomi Bishop, a self-made, shrewd and successful investment banker who has made great gains in launching highly successful IPOs, though her most recent less-than-stellar effort, in which she was pulled from representing just before launch, had been seen in the media as a black mark on her career. Her latest client is a potential billion-dollar social-media business named Cachet that prides itself on hiring skillful hackers whose know-how have made its CEO confident that all of its clients data i...
Sept. 3, 2016

Blood Father (2016) Mel Gibson – Movie Reviews

Blood Father casts a weathered Mel Gibson as a former alcoholic tattoo artist ex-con divorcee named John Link, who’s spent the last few years mostly off the grid in a trailer park in California’s Coachella Valley (shot in New Mexico). He has been anxiously searching for his 17-year-old daughter, Lydia, who ran away at 14. She re-enters his life soon enough, desperately looking for money to make her getaway when she ends up shooting her ne’er-do-well boyfriend, Jonah, during an armed heist, causi...