Saturday, December 22, 2018

Mary Poppins Returns (2019) Is Full of New and Familiar Tricks

Mary Poppins, the British superhero equipped with a talking umbrella and bewitched carpetbag, first debuted onto the big-screen nearly fifty-four years ago. Having become a childhood classic starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke in the hotly contested adaptation between author P.L. Traver and Walt Disney, the beloved nanny makes a comeback in a familiar and fresh "remake-quel" of the original.

Set twenty-five years after the 1964's story, Mary Poppins (Emily Blunt) returns to the Banks’s home where Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) are all grown-up and have fallen on hard times at the height of the Great Depression. Michael, in particular, is struggling to overcome his wife's passing when he learns that the Fidelity Fiduciary Bank is about to repossess his family's home. While Michael and Jane race against an impossible deadline, Mary and an exuberant lamplighter Jack (Lin-Manuel Miranda) take Michael's children with a series of bombastic and inspiring adventures.

Friday, December 21, 2018

5 Favorite Movie Theater Moments in 2018

It's hard to believe another year of going to the movies have come and gone. There's plenty of movies that I missed out on seeing in the theaters as I hoped, but there's quite a few that will always by in my mind as some of the best experiences I've had. Here are five of my favorite moments to happen at the cinema this year. What was your favorite movie theater experience in 2018? Feel free to let me know in the comments.


This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Infinity War.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Stars I Love: Taylor Swift

If you had told me a year ago, let alone five years ago, that I'd be doing a whole post on Taylor Swift I wouldn't believe you. It's not that I was a certified hater. Her music was the inadvertent soundtrack of my adolescence, but bopping along in the car to her latest hits wasn't nearly enough to make me a bonafide Swiftie.

Other than being aware of her music growing up, one of the first memories I have was attending a sold-out showing to Valentine's Day. The theater was filled with lots of couples on dates, but it was also filled with teenagers my age. While I was convinced at the time it was the star-studded cast that might've attracted young adults to the movie, or the fact that it was a holiday, I look back and think now that it was all about Taylor. For a few reasons: that theater has never been that packed since (excluding superhero movies), and every time Taylor showed up on-screen, those different groups of girls were in full-fangirl mode - not just when her characters' boyfriend (Taylor Lautner) was on-screen but also when she had a few small individual moments of her own.  I was in the middle of Taylor's influence and didn't even quite realize it.

And, that's how the next several years of my life went: Taylor could be heard in every retail store, on the drives to and from school, seen on award shows and in movies or tv shows, but I didn't become hardcore about it.

Monday, December 17, 2018

Stars I Love: Sarah Paulson

Usually when I begin my Stars I Love posts, I have all kinds of things to gab about and how much I love them. I have the same butterfly feelings for Sarah Paulson as I do for a lot of my past favorite stars, but I don't have any way to put my feels into words. It's strange because I could've summed up my love for Ryan Gosling as a human unicorn or Chris Evans as an adorable meatball, but instead, those posts went on for about 5,000 words total. And I just want to sum it up with: I love Sarah. So here we are.

Being speechless about Sarah is probably the reason why I'm in love with her. Having spent most of her life acting as much as possible, she's visibly one of the most talented actresses right now, but she didn't come into her fame or success until her forties. From television shows to indies, to now major Hollywood films, the Tampa native (the only good thing to come out of Florida, TBH) worked her way up the ladder just wanting to be a good actress. For years, she was existing on theater roles and pilots until someone came along to give her bigger opportunities (Thank you Ryan Murphy). All the while she kept questioning if she could really become a good actress. Her talent is one you have to see in action to get it.

Saturday, December 15, 2018

Some Reasons Why 2018 Wasn't A Complete Waste


In and out of Hollywood, 2018 had a lot going on, sometimes a little too many unbelievable and deplorable headlines to fully comprehend. But that's what some saving graces are for: to keep your head above water when you think you could lose your sanity. There's a few moments that stand out at the top of my list for making this hectic year worth it and made me feel #BLESSED.

This post contains spoilers for The Walking Dead. 


Saturday, December 8, 2018

Avengers: Endgame (2019) Trailer Reaction

The Avengers taught us love. The Avengers: Age of Ultron taught us patience. Avengers: Infinity War taught us pain. What are we going to learn from Avengers: Endgame? Probably, how to file a class-action lawsuit against Kevin Feige for our collective therapy bills.

Marvel dropped us the gift that everybody and nobody wanted: the new trailer for the next Avengers film. So let's check it out! This post definitely contains spoilers.


Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Annihilation (2018) Is One Of The Years Underrated Sci-Fi Flicks

We need more sci-fi movies with women. I’ll point you to director Alex Garland’s Annihilation as one of the most recent reasons why. Despite having a familiar plot of an isolated team searching an almost alien-like treacherous land, the film hypnotizes you with its bizarre world and the mystery of unanswered questions. The movie's cast, cinematography, and world-building is satisfying enough on its own with what it gives to the story but also leaves you wanting more.

Based on the trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer, a mysterious translucent orb looms over Area X. No one knows how or why it came to fruition, just that its electromagnetic power slowly absorbs everything in its wake. Anything or anyone that crosses the Shimmer’s threshold is never to be seen or heard from again. That is until cellular-biology professor Lena (Natalie Portman) is inexplicably reunited with her husband (Oscar Isaac), a soldier who entered the Shimmer as part of a military operation and was the only survivor to come out alive but suffering ill effects from being inside. Curious to venture into the heart of the orb and find out what happens inside, Lena and four other women - psychologist Dr. Ventress (Jennifer Jason Leigh), paramedic Anya Thorensen (Gina Rodriguez), anthropologist Cass Shepphard (Tuva Novotny) and physicist Josie Radek (Tessa Thompson) - make one last dangerous trek searching for answers.

On the surface level, there isn’t a lot about Annihilation that’s unique from many other sci-fi counterparts. The story is something that we’ve seen before: a uniquely qualified group of individuals enter an unknown world and nothing can prepare for them for what they’re about to encounter. We’re left with various questions about what happened, and the suspense is left up to both the cast of characters and the environment (which becomes a character on its own) to tease us with what happened: Were the  previous military groups driven crazy and murdered each other? Did something else kill them - how? What? The longer Lena’s squadron spends in the orb, their doubts and terror about the environment start tipping the scale of how they struggle to trust each other and the deathly situation that they’re in.

What lies underneath the surface of the film is how the story and direction is gorgeously haunting. The Shimmer's overgrown forests and peaceful isolation feels like something out of a fairytale. But lurking behind the illusion of its dream-like atmosphere are changes that the team could never imagine: People become one with the landscape, animals transform into terrifying beasts, and the fact that nobody can really live within its translucent walls increases any sense of seeing civilization again. As Lena and her comrades follow its trail of breadcrumbs about the military units that came before them, their resolve starts to crumble – there really is no such thing as going back. The Shimmer is filled with tension and wonder about the unknown, a lingering suspicion about what will happen next; it has a foreboding peacefulness to it that’s matched by violence; life equals death; destruction breeds creation. The longer you spend with Lena and the group, the more you want to know answers too, and to see who might survive, die, or how the Shimmer changes them.

The film is very much an ensemble piece. Portman’s career over the past decade has truly flourished, churning out all kinds of complex performances from Black Swan to Jackie. As Lena, she offers a formidable leader to the group and someone to anchor the story to as she tries to navigate what’s going on around her – she’s vulnerable, smart, and resilient. The rest of the characters could come across as a little trope-ish compared to similar action / sci-fi movies, but they create a tight camaraderie between them that makes their tentative unity and division almost palpable. It’s not hard to fall in love with the film’s overall aesthetic, to be honest: Five women walking into the Shimmer ready to get answers and kick ass.

Written and directed by Alex Garland, Annihilation is only the first step in a trilogy, and unfortunately, he only had the intention of making the first one. When he started the project, the author's manuscript was just coming together, and Garland scraped the series' ideas together to form his own vision - ironically, just like The Shimmer. His film's world-building asks big questions, and the road to answering them is chilling and unexpected. Annihilation works well enough as a stand-alone, but knowing what happens next would’ve been interesting for the rest of the trilogy to be made and explore. There’s honestly nothing wrong with Garland's film, except the shame of wanting more and being forced to wait for another director to take the series on again. One can only hope that this breeds similar yet different sci-films in the future.

Rating: ★★
Have you seen Annihilation? What did you think?