BradWesley123's Movie Journal- May 2016

Respectful of it's subject matter and restrained to the point of elegance, The Danish Girl is often an effective drama with a pair of strong performance from Redmayne, who's better here than he was in his Oscar-winning role in The Theory of Everything, and Vikander, who is not a "Supporting" Actress here in the slightest. Unfortunately, the restraint is a double edged sword; while it never feels like it's overdoing things, it also is fairly bloodless, with no real passion lighting up the screen. If they had found a way to combine those sensibilites, nuanced but raw, then this could've been an all-time great.

Monthly Wesley AwardBest Costume Design- Paco Delgado

It's fairly light on plot, and feels stretched at just 97 minutes, but Manglehorn often works thanks to a great cast and strong direction. It's also just nice to see Pacino doing strong character work again.

It's impact has been somewhat dulled by a long line of imitators over the years, but Midnight Run is still an exceptionally fun time with a smart, witty script and a pair of leads that have superb chemistry. There have bee a lot of emulators, but few capture the ihumanity on display here.

Monthly Wesley AwardsBest Picture
Best Original Screenplay- George Gallo

Tumbledown is very much the coping-with-a-death indie that you've seen before, with little deviation. That doesn't mean that it's bad, as it's actually rather charming at times; this is mostly due to strong performances from Hall and Sudeikis. The problem is the script; it's fairly rote, and introduces a romantic angle the just doesn't work that well. The leads have chemistry, but more friendly that passionate loving.

Despite strong work from Portman, and strong support from the tech department, the behind-the-scenes story of Jane Got a Gun will always be more intriguing than the film that resulted from it. It's an okay film, but it's a rather rote exercise in genre cliches that never touches the modernist ambitions that it aims for.

A few of the action scenes are solid, and it benefits greatly from Peter Firth's performance, but MI-5 is your average, by-the-numbers Bourne retread with little meat on it's bones.

Visually, Dracula is just a marvel to look at. The sets, costumes, makeup and cinematography are just as good as cinema gets. The story, however, is too undercooked; with the central love story failing to ever take off, most of the characters underdeveloped, and too much padding. The cast is pretty 50/50 here to; Oldman is exceptionally well cast, as is Hopkins, but Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves are miscast (Reeves, woefully so).

Monthly Wesley AwardsBest Cinematography- Michael Ballhaus
Best Makeup
Best Production Design
Best Sound

Despite borrowing heavily from Wes Anderson, Band of Robbers is a surprisingly fun and clever modern retelling of of the story of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. The story isn't as strong as one would hope, it's mostly strung together by energy, but it's funny enough, and fast enough, to overcome it's faults.

Monthly Wesley AwardsBest Adapted Screenplay- Aaron Nee & Adam Nee

Not the atrocity that reviews had lead me to believe, but that's not exactly saying much. Despite a commited lead performance from Ethan Hawke and a few solid stylistic choices, Regression is split between wanting to be a piercing look at fanaticism and a straight-up psychological horror movie. Splitting between the two means one side isn't very effective, and the other is pretty much a waste of time. There are a couple of okay moments, but they don't add up to much.

The Beaver is an odd movie. It starts out looking like it's going to be a movie about a sad-sack finally understanding how to be a part of his family, but morphs into a film about depression and father-son relationships. While it never spirals tonally, that narrative flip is a bit jarring. It only marginally takes away from the quality, but the film's story and performances are strong enough to overcome it. Gibson does strong work as the lead, hitting all of the emotional beats with a humanity that essentially carries the film. Yelchin too is quite good, playing the resentful son. Solid, but could've been better with a tighter script.

Monthly Wesley AwardBest Supporting Actor- Anton Yelchin

Ashby often works thanks to it's talented cast and occasional beats of wit, but too often feels extremely derivative in a distracting way. When it works it's a charming coming-of-age tale with an edge, and this is largely due to Rourke's performance, doing the best work he's done since The Wrestler. His scenes with Wolff have a genuine warmth to them, even if their scenes that have been done to death in the past. Pretty much everything else felt unnecessary and warmed-over.

Last Action Hero has an excellent idea at it's core. Sending up action movies in the world of an action movie with (at the time) the biggest action star in the world sounds like a hell of a lot of fun on paper. Problem is, the story has clearly been so hacked up, or malnourished to begin with, that it eventually becomes nothing more than one of the action movies that it's parodying. Everything in the fake movie world worked for me; the satire was on point, and Schwarzenegger does quite well lampooning his usual character. The film goes downhill when the action moves to the real world; it loses focus and becomes a grimy parody of itself. If the film could've stuck to the story, it would've been an all-time great.

Basic Instinct is just ludicrous throughout it's runtime, but it knows it is and is able to find campy thrills throughout. This is the film that put Sharon Stone on the map, and she's superb throughout, controlling every scene to the point that it seems like she's the only one there. While the script quite uneven, director Verhoeven notes the right notes to play to keep this thing moving along nicely.

Monthly Wesley AwardsBest Actress- Sharon Stone
Best Editing- Frank J. Urioste
Best Score- Jerry Goldsmith

There are two movies in The 5th Wave; one that's a bland love story between an unlikely pair, the other a somewhat interesting sci-fi/action flick. The bland side, unfortunately, ends up outweighing the other side. Moretz's romance is pretty much everything we've come to expect from a YA novel adaptation, minus the interest; even the people behind the scenes can't muster any interest in this story. The other, lead by Nick Robinson's character, isn't great, but it at least has some solid moments. This side is just too contrived to inject much life. In other words, it's not a very good movie.

While it does occasionally succumb to the usual trappings of a biopic (vagueness, wikipedia-style checkbox marking), All the Way is often a absorbing drama thanks to a powerhouse performance by Bryan Cranston. It's surprising that it went to TV, as this is the kind of film that would've likely netted a few Oscar nominations. Other kudos must go to the makeup department, who help Cranston embody LBJ.

Monthly Wesley AwardBest Actor- Bryan Cranston
Best Supporting Actress- Melissa Leo

Zoolander was an ingenuous parody of the fashion world and the perception of beauty. Zoolander 2 is a joke of a film that is everything that the first one made fun of. The target's of the original are all brought in on the joke, and that lead's to a toothless bore of a film. Add to that the fact that the entire cast is mugging so hard that you think they might break something (though Ferrell does manage to slip a few funny moments into the film). The only jokes that worked for me were the stuff about Hansel's extended "family"; they were just so odd that it made me giggle despite my best efforts. Otherwise, this was a major disappointment.

Monthly Wesley Award
Worst Picture