Tinseltown Reviews

Coco is a Pixar fantasy adventure film directed by Lee Unkrich and starring Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Renée Victor, and Alanna Ubach. The movie follows 12-year-old Miguel Rivera, an aspiring musician who accidentally stumbles into the land of the dead during Dia de los Muertos, and embarks on a journey to find the legendary musician Ernesto de la Cruz. I think it was about 15 minutes into the movie that I thought to myself, "Yeah. This movie's going to make me cry." Coco is a suckerpunch of beauty and emotion that really comes out of nowhere, with near-Studio Ghibli levels of visual beauty and a surprisingly emotional story rivaling that of Up 's opening sequence, easily making this Pixar's finest work since at least Toy Story 3 . Coco is one of Pixar's three movies featuring an actual human cast (following The Incredibles and Brave ) and really surprised me with how unmarketable they are. The characters really a...

The Punisher is a Marvel-Netflix series created by Steve Lightfoot and starring Jon Bernthal, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Amber Rose Revah, Ben Barnes, and Deborah Ann Woll. The season follows Frank Castle, an ex-military vigilante who uses lethal methods to kill his targets as "The Punisher", as he goes to find and kill the people responsible for killing his family. The Punisher is the sixth series in the Marvel-Netflix franchise, coming right off the heels of the sadly average The Defenders , and comes up as the most anti-superhero project Marvel has ever done yet. In fact, there was absolutely zero mention of anything related to superpowers or any of the events that occurred in other Marvel titles, movies or otherwise, and The Punisher thrives because of this. While not perfect, this series does an excellent job with its tone, its story, and most of all, its characters. The Story Frank Castle and his family were on a lovely picnic to the park one day when all of ...

Justice League is a 2017 superhero movie directed by Zack Snyder with some contributions from Joss Whedon (director of both Avengers movies), starring Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Henry Cavill, and Ciarán Hinds. The film is a sequel to the highly controversial Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice , and sees Batman and Wonder Woman gather a team of superhumans including the Flash, Aquaman, and Cyborg in order to prevent an alien invasion led by Steppenwolf. If there was one movie I really wanted to be good, this was the one. The DC movie franchise has been incredibly rocky, with its first truly good movie being this year's Wonder Woman . This movie had to be the one to really shape the future of the DCEU. Whether or not the movie succeeded in this, however, is up to you, and it ends up not being terrible, not being good, and not being mixed, but just... there. It's incredibly safe, incredibly formulaic, and has no sense of real identity. ...

Thor: Ragnarok  is a 2017 superhero movie directed by Taika Kwan  Waititi and starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Mark Ruffalo, and Jeff Goldblum. The movie is a sequel to two pretty bad Thor  movies that we can safely ignore and follows the god of thunder on his journey to break out of a gladiatorial world and save Asgard from its legendary fabled destruction--the Ragnarok. It's a pretty commonly accepted fact that Captain America wasn't cool until Winter Soldier  really showed him as the badass soldier he really was. This movie was much the same way for Thor. For the past six years, he was pretty consistently the least cool Avenger (maybe besides Hawkeye), and had no real personality besides "lightning guy with magic hammer". This is the movie where we finally get to see the badass God of Thunder we've always wanted. Because of this one movie alone, Thor has risen up to probably the #3 position on my personal list o...