Tag: travis
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Sundance 2020 Review: ‘The Perfect Candidate’, Haifaa al-Mansour Gets Back To Her Hopeful, Empowering Roots
It’s good to see Haifaa al-Mansour get back to basics, so to speak. Her 2012 debut, the uplifting, vitally-important coming of age film Wadjda, made her the first Saudi woman to direct a feature. She followed that up with two uninspiring English-language movies about other women experiencing personal triumphs, but the heart of her debut…
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Sundance 2020 Review: ‘Summertime’, Carlos Lopez Estrada’s Poetry Slam Is Like Being Trapped In A Bad Open Mic Night
The freestyle verse of Carlos Lopez Estrada’s powerful, racially-charged Blindspotting lit up Sundance on Opening Night a couple of years ago. It’s clear the festival’s producers had similar hopes for his spoken-word followup, Summertime, but they couldn’t bar the doors fast enough to keep viewers from fleeing this poetry slam from Hell in which 25…
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Review: ‘The Assistant’, Julia Garner Endures A Weinstein-esque Boss In Kitty Green’s Stuffy Workplace Drama
Some have referred to filmmaker Kitty Green’s The Assistant as the Harvey Weinstein movie, a first shot at dramatizing the fury that sparked the #MeToo movement. But to actually watch the film, a muted drama as much about crappy bosses and shitty workplaces than any specific abuses committed by Weinstein, it’s hard not to be…
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Podcast: Bad Boys For Life, Dolittle, Morbius, and the Star Wars 9 that Might Have Been
Travis flies solo on this abbreviated episode of Cinema Royale. Martin Lawrence was finally able to convince Will Smith to return for BAD BOYS FOR LIFE, but was the wait worth it? While Robert Downey Jr.’s passion project DOLITTLE finally sets sail, and gets sunk at the box office. Plus, a look at Colin Trevorrow’s…
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Review: ‘Troop Zero’, Viola Davis Plays Den Mother In A Familiar Underdog Story
*NOTE: This is a reprint of my review from the 2018 Sundance Film Festival* I don’t know what I was expecting from the quirky underdog story Troop Zero, but this wasn’t it. Perhaps I was swayed, like so many probably were, by the presence of Viola Davis and Allison Janney in the cast, along with…
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Review: ‘Bad Boys For Life’ Wants To Be The Next ‘Fast & Furious’, And That’s Perfectly Okay
“Bad Boys Bad Boys, whatcha gonna do?” Here’s an idea, let’s make Bad Boys into the next Fast & Furious. That seems to be the mandate for Bad Boys for Life, which is one of those movies fans of the 1995 buddy cop flick and its 2003 sequel have been begging for, but not more…
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Review: ‘Underwater’, Kristen Stewart Gets Submerged In A Surprisingly-Good Deep Sea Horror
Going into Underwater, the deep sea horror from director William Eubank (The Signal), you kinda know what to expect. It’s going to take a little piece from Alien, a bit from Leviathan, maybe a dash of Event Horizon and The Abyss, rinse, repeat. Being familiar isn’t a detriment this time around, and for those who are…
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Review: Tiffany Haddish And Rose Byrne Save ‘Like A Boss’ From Needing A Total Makeover
“We are two badass queens, like those bitches who raised Wonder Woman.” If that line, delivered with swerve by Tiffany Haddish, already gets on your nerves then chances are you’re going to hate Like a Boss. The film, which pairs Haddish up with the equally-funny Rose Byrne as best friends Mia and Mel, owners of a…
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Review: ‘Three Christs’, Richard Gere’s Drama Gets By On Noble Intentions And Divine Performances
Richard Gere continues his push for empathic treatment of the mentally ill with Three Christs, a humanist but stilted drama based on the research by psychologist Milton Rokeach in his book, The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. A fascinating study at a time when cruelty was the preferred method of treatment, Rokeach helped popularize the use…
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10 Great Overlooked Films Of 2019
So what makes for a great overlooked film, or a hidden gem as I like to call them? For me, it’s simple. Any movie that resonated with me, that I found some connection with, and feel others will find a similar connection if they give it a chance. As with any year, there are so…