Monthly Archives: October 2017

Happy Death Day (2017) Review: A Halloween Treat In 1993, there was a movie released called ‘Groundhog Day’. It starred Bill Murray, and was directed by Harold Ramis. It was about a weatherman who gets stuck repeating the same day over and over, waking up to the same song as each day restarts. Since then, a number have movies have adopted the classic’s premise for their own stories. They are the movies we refer to as “It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ but”.This year alone saw the release of ‘Before I Fall’, which applied the format to a high school melodrama, and 2014’s ‘Edge of Tomorrow’ borrowed the idea for a sci-fi backdrop. This time, the day goes on repeat for a young girl named Theresa (Tree for short), except she doesn’t just fall asleep and wake up in the next day. She has to die first.‘Happy Death Day’ takes that plot device that worked so well over twenty years ago and put it in the middle of a slasher film. Whenever the day repeats, it’s like looking at the beginning of a different horror movie each time. That makes for some very fun moments as Tree tries to figure out who’s been killing her. Never has there been a montage so gruesome as the one that's seen here, but I'm certainly glad we've reached this point in society. From this moment on montages must be this intense. Literally, life or death. As these…

Battle Of The Sexes (2017) Review: 1973 or 2017? The beauty of cinema is that it can transport you to a time and a place you didn't think you could experience yourself. A bygone era that is so different from the times you live in, it feels as though it took place on a different planet. 'Battle of the Sexes', a movie about the incredible tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, does not provide that sense of escapism. The picture it paints feels all too often like a self-portrait of today. After the 2016 United States election, I can't think of a more relevant film to come out. The qualified and less charismatic Billie Jean King played by Emma Stone, against the loud bombastic Bobby Riggs, played by Steve Carell, certainly, gives a parallel. The beauty of 'Battle of the Sexes' is the way it gives each of these counterparts a sense of identity. They're public figures, but like the best biopics, you leave the film feeling as though you knew them as people. You watch Billie Jean King go through the same journey as the heroes from sports movies past. The movie does a fantastic job of intertwining her own path, with the path of women everywhere. The tennis match itself holds little stake for the characters, but you never lose sight of how important it was for the world. If I had one gripe with 'The Battle…