Monthly Archives: January 2015

The Wedding Ringer (2015) Review Romantic comedies are probably one of the most laughed at genres of film out there. The high brow critics will tell you time and time again of their many tropes. Their characters are shallow, their stories are unbelievable and more than anything else, everyone in the theatre is left thinking no one on earth would act like that. I've wanted to scream at a character in a rom-com more so than any in a horror movie. How many times do characters have to overhear conversations out of context, and then for the sake of the plot, refuse to hear any explanation that would provide said context, before audiences say enough is enough?But the thing is, audiences don't think it's enough. Romantic comedies have been around forever, and the genre is not an inherently bad one. from 'Some Like it Hot' to 'Love Actually', you can always find a good number of gems of the ilk. But even the worst ones get a lot of play, and the clichés that are trotted out time and time again are no more offensive than the ones in your cheesy action flick. In fact, comparably it's even less offensive because as frustrating as the characters might be, their predicaments are at least plausible. It's the plausibility of these stories that makes them so frustrating to watch because it seems like such an easy thing to pull off.All you have to do is craft a good love story…

The Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armies (2014) Review Prequels have enjoyed a resurgence in the last few years. While the more cynical movie viewer will see the movement as a bid to forever milk a franchise dry and then milk it some more, others will see it as a chance to return to the worlds that once captivated them. Regardless of your impressions going in, however, what matters is how well the job is done.Prequels are notoriously hard to do. Just imagine trying to develop tension for characters that the audience knows are going to survive, or having a world-ending plot in a world that we know remains unended. Not to mention the added pressure of having to connect your film to the original one. As difficult as it may be, it's not impossible to do it, and do it quite well.Recent forays into the prequel territory are films such as X-Men: First Class and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Both were critical and commercial successes that garnered sequels that came out this very year. These films seemed to have, in a sense, cracked the prequel code. They embrace the fact that audiences are more than familiar with their franchises, even going so far as placing the ultimate destination in the very title. The emphasis of these films rests with the characters and their development, which in a certain sense, is the obvious place to go. The difficulty of building a…