Tinseltown Reviews

Jessica Jones is a Marvel-Netflix series created by Melissa Rosenberg, starring Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor, Eka Darville, J. R. Ramirez, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Janet McTeer. This second season follows Jessica as she deals with the traumatic events of the first season and wrestles with her fear of becoming a psychotic murderer. Encouraged by her friends, she investigates the mysterious IGH company which had experimented on her 17 years ago and gave Jessica her enhanced powers. Meanwhile, an unknown entity is hunting down people connected to IGH, one who might have a closer connection to Jessica than previously believed. I was a really big fan of the first season of Jessica Jones , and it was pretty tied for my favorite of Marvel's Netflix series (rivaling the fantastic first season of Daredevil ). That being said, I had extremely high hopes going into this season and couldn't wait to see more of Jessica's past and how she will deal with the effects of what hap...

Game Night  is a thriller comedy directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, starring Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, and Jesse Plemons. The movie follows a highly competitive, game-loving couple Max and Annie who are having trouble conceiving, which they believe is due to Max's feelings of inferiority towards his highly successful brother, Brooks. They and their friends have a tradition of weekly game nights, and when one game night hosted by Brooks spirals out of control, the friends are swept into a real-life murder mystery filled with conspiracies, plot twists, and a whole lot of laughs. This movie was something of a surprise hit, and I'm sure most people haven't even heard of it, which is a shame considering how funny it is. We all knew Jason Bateman (of Arrested Development  fame) is a comedy genius, but Rachel McAdams shines as his costar with just as great a performance....

Black Panther is a Marvel superhero film directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Letitia Wright, Daniel Kaluuya, and Martin Freeman and Andy Serkis as the only white characters in the entire movie. The film follows T'Challa as he officially takes on the mantle of the Black Panther and the king of Wakanda, and having to learn to deal with the hardships of being a king, especially when a secret from his father's past starts to become unveiled and a new man rises to challenge his position on the throne. It's hard to deny the amount of hype that came with the release of Black Panther , one that I was worried might damage the movie's reputation like it did with The Last Jedi just a few months ago. There was also a part of me that was afraid that a large portion of the movie's praise would be due to white guilt (the "if you didn't like it you're a racist" effect, AKA the only r...

The Shape of Water is a 2017 science-fiction romantic drama film directed and written by Guillermo del Toro, starring Sally Hawkins, Doug Jones, Michael Shannon, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Richard Jenkins. The movie follows Elisa Esposito, a mute janitor working at a secret government facility set in Cold War-era Baltimore, where she meets, befriends, and ultimately falls in love with a humanoid amphibian creature that had been recently captured by the U.S. government. "When he looks at me, he does not know what I lack, or how I am incomplete. He sees me for what I am, as I am." So begins one of the strangest, and yet most endearing, love stories in modern cinema. But what elevates this film from simple love story to timeless classic isn't its weird "fish sex" romance, but the themes that resonate through every character present. The Shape of Water is a story about incomplete people--people who feel unfulfilled with their lives because the...

Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi is a 2017 space epic film written and directed by Rian Johnson and starring Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Kelly Marie Tran, and a whole lot of Porgs. The movie takes place where 2015's The Force Awakens left off, with Rey seeking training from the legendary Luke Skywalker while General Leia Organa and her Resistance fighters try to escape the clutches of the First Order. Throughout the film, we see both Rey and Kylo Ren struggle with the light and dark sides as they deal with their pasts and relationships with their masters. This film is an interesting one--come out as the most divisive Star Wars movie yet (yes, even more so than the prequels)--with at the time of this review a 93% critic score and 55% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes . You either think it's the best since Empire Strikes Back or you think Rian Johnson murdered your childhood and is an even worse abomination tha...

Lady Bird is a 2017 comedy-drama film directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges, and  Timothée Chalamet, following the life of a girl named Christine who prefers to be called "Lady Bird" in her last year of high school. There are loads of YA coming-of-age movies nowadays where the main character is a teenager who is inherently different in some way and learns important life lessons after falling in love with someone who is their equal or opposite. In essence, cheesy love story between two teens that helps them grow and of which four out of every five leads to at least one of them dying (think The Fault in Our Stars , If I Stay , The Space Between Us , pretty much every John Green book). Lady Bird is a refreshing new take on the genre in which the love story that the main character grows from isn't a romantic one (in fact, she's tried and failed at doing just that), but rather a materna...

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...