Media Man

X-Men Apocalypse  is a 2016 superhero movie directed/produced/written by Bryan Singer and co-written by Simon Kinberg/Michael Dougherty/Dan Harris, all of whom have worked on the scripts for previous X-Men films. The film has earned the love of its audience, with a 7.6 on IMDb, but has so far been a critical disappointment with a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 53% on Metacritic. Story The film's set-up is pretty similar to how it goes down in the comics; an ancient mutant named En Sabah Nur has awakened from his slumber and has set his sights on destroying/conquering the Earth, wiping it clean of all  humans, who he sees as the weakest beings on the planet, and leaving only the strong to survive and rule. Now, the X-Men must band together to stop his master plan. Even though the set-up is good I think it's Fox trying to play their trump card after it's already been played.  Days of Future Past  was such a perfect climax/ending to the X-Men movies because it felt so...

Looper  is a 2012 sci-fi action film written and directed by Rian Johnson. The film garnered critical praise and financial success upon its release was one of the most well regarded movies of that year. Please note that it's very hard to review this movie due to its complex plot and just cool touches I don't want to spoil. Story Joe is a looper, an assassin who kills somebody sent back through time whenever the future mob needs to get rid of a body. (This is the simplest version I could come up with.) One day, however, he's sent a very special target: his older self. Old Joe escapes and now Young Joe must find him and kill him before his employers kill him for letting his target escape. The set up is delightfully original and many of the ideas in the film are pretty inspired. They make the world feel real, getting you sucked into the environment. The screenplay is fantastic. Even though the exposition at the beginning is clearly exposition, it doesn't feel lik...

The Evil Dead  is a 1981 low-budget horror film written and directed by Sam Raimi. The film launched the careers of both Raimi and the film's main star, Bruce Campbell. Despite it being an amateur film and having a measly $375,000 budget, the movie has grown into one of the most iconic films of recent memory and is regarded as one of the greatest horror movies ever made. Story High schooler Ash Williams and a group of his friends are vacationing in a cabin in the Tennessee mountains when they find a book made of human flesh and a collection of tapes from the man who found it. The group accidentally activates a spell that awakens a group of evil spirits that begin to possess them one-by-one, tuning them into zombies. Now, Ash must survive the night and defeat the evil dead. Even though the set-up is cliched, the film was released before  the "cabin in the woods" was a trope. So rather than hurting the movie, the setup comes off more as a staple, a little piece of...

Being depressed isn't fun, right? It makes you feel useless, puts you in a poor temper and generally skews your view on things to the nihilistic side for the rest of the day. I say this to disclaim that I'm not saying that you should go out and buy art to purposefully depress yourself. I'm just asking, if something we know is depressing is before us, does that necessarily mean we should avoid it at any cost, especially if it's a representation of real life events? The biggest question here is: What's the point of depressing art? Artists certainly use it to vent, that's true, but what does it mean for us, the readers? One point of depressing art could be empathy. Take, for example, the book Maus , which tells the true story of a holocaust survivor and his struggles with the author, his son. People can identify with this story for many reasons: struggling with a relative with alzheimer's, a distant parent, even having a friend or relative who's...

Deadpool  is a 2016 superhero action/comedy directed by Tim Miller and written by duo Paul Wernick/Rhett Reese. The film was, and still is, huge among audiences and critics, surpassing Passion of the Christ  as the highest grossing R-rated film ever made. Story The plot, for the most part, is a simple revenge story. Somebody kidnaps Deadpool's girlfriend and now Deadpool has to find and kill the bad guy and save the hot chick. What makes it work, though, is that the movie knows it's simple, so that's not what the focus is on. The focus is on the character of Deadpool himself and the screenplay. Deadpool is a full ant-hero through and through: he only cares about getting his revenge, not helping people or fighting bad guys for any other reason. You're able to route for him, though, because they spent time setting up Deadpool's back story and why we're supposed to care about him. This is helped by the fact that the character is consistently funny. The other c...

Today we're revising Arrow  season 3. I can't explain what was wrong with this season. After the brilliant climax of season 2, the show became insufferable. The character dynamics became annoying and melodramatic, the pacing was sinfully boring and it felt like nothing from the last season had any consequence. It ticked me off!! So, to sooth my own soul and to hopefully present you with something you'll enjoy, we're going to get my version of Arrow  season 3. Let's fix this. The biggest issue I had with season 3 was the amount of time passed since season 2. It is way too long of a time and I felt robbed of a potential storyline between seasons. What happened in Starling City after that? Was there resistance? What did the team do to clean up the city? The other gripe for me there was that I felt like it was stupid not to have either Oliver or Roy go after Thea. She's Oliver's beloved sister and she's Roy's girlfriend. They were told not to...

The Seventh Seal  is a 1958 supernatural medieval drama written and directed by famed Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and is the first of his films I've seen. For this review I'm going to alter the format I used for my review of The Birds : I'll be discussing story elements first and then discuss the technical parts of the film. Story A knight struggling with his faith and his nihilistic squire are coming home to their native Sweden after a 10 year long crusade. On his way to his castle, he meets a family of performers, a naive blacksmith and a young woman from an abandoned village. Along the way, the knight plays a game of chess with Death, the Grim Reaper, himself in exchange for his life. The game continues throughout the entire film at certain points. One of the main themes of the film is nihilism. While the knight isn't sure if he believes in God his entire trip, his squire is adamant that there is no God and that life itself has no meaning at all, at one p...