Life: Life Finds a Way (To Kill You)

Originality is overrated. While many bemoan Hollywood’s lack of originality while awash in a sea of reboots, remakes, sequels and franchise building, they forget that everyone has to get their ideas from somewhere. Everything is a remix, nothing is original anymore, and every new idea is just the culmination of ideas from the past. Or as Pablo Picasso once put it, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” The thing that separates the inspired ideas from the uninspired ones, however, is what they do with their plunder. Life is a terrific example of this. It may not have a single original bone in its body, but it at least knows how to use its stolen ideas effectively.

Power Rangers: A Movie Stuck in Mid-Morph

When I found out that they were making a Power Rangers movie, I was a bit skeptical. I wasn’t surprised at all that it was happening, though. Since Hollywood has been mining my generation’s nostalgia for script material for years, it was only a matter of time before they got their turn. The thing that had me worried, though, was how exactly they were going to attack this subject. I was a huge Power Rangers fan back in the day, but I’ll be the first to tell you that it hasn’t aged well at all. The inconsistencies with the American footage and the Japanese Super Sentai footage are glaringly obvious in retrospect, and it’s a perfect distillation of the vapid focus testing that dominated children’s television in the 90’s. There were two ways this could’ve gone about: they could keep the goofy, cheesy aesthetic and make the experience a groan inducing nightmare for anyone above the age of 10, or they could take the grim and gritty route and risk pissing off the legions of jaded fans who’ve had their hearts broken by Michael Bay and Zack Snyder too many times. In their attempt to find a happy middle ground, this movie just ended up killing both tones with one stone.

Logan - End of an Era

There’s a certain sense of finality surrounding Logan, a sense of inevitability. That should come as no surprise as this is supposedly the last hurrah for Hugh Jackman’s incarnation of X-Men’s Wolverine. Since the timeline has been tampered with in X-Men: Days of Future’s Past, rendering parts of the early 2000’s X-Men series null and void, Hugh Jackman is starting to get too old to play what is essentially the character that made him a star, and Deadpool has made 20^th Century Fox a little less gun-shy about making R-rated superhero movies, everyone agrees that if this is going to be the end of this character, he might as well go out with a bang. I was a bit wary about the hype surrounding this movie since Wolverine’s previous solo outings have been less than stellar, (The Wolverine was okay, and the less said about X-Men Origins: Wolverine the better.) but I figured I’d see how this chapter in the X-Men saga goes if for no other reason than closure.

Get Out - When Racial Fears Get Real

Comedy and horror have an awful lot in common. Both are about defying expectations (or at least they should be), both require more skill than one would expect to pull off properly, both have a singular goal that will result in failure if not met, and the best ones give the audience something to think about between bouts of fear and/or laughter. Combining the two seems like a feat that only the maddest of mad scientists are willing to pull off, but there have been a few successful attempts like Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Shaun of the Dead, Scream, Cabin in the Woods, just to name a few. Get Out strikes that balance while also tackling the heavy subject of racism in a refreshing way. The directorial debut of Jordan Peele of Key and Peele fame, Get Out will make you laugh your ass off, shit your pants in terror, and think about whose lives really matter, sometimes all within a few minutes of each other.