Forgot I never did reviews for some movies I saw in the theater over the last couple months.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot
A good movie and Tina Fey does a great job, but the tone is a little weird. It tries to be both funny and dramatic/tense, and it never really meshed for me. I also thought the ending was a little weird (a minor character in the first 3/4 suddenly becomes the only focus), but all of this made a lot more sense after I left the theater and realized it was based on someone's actual life. Real life isn't quite so clean and narratively well-rounded, so I give those things a little more leeway.
3 / 5
Zootopia
Think I already talked about this one, but it was a really fun movie and when I realized Jason Bateman was the fox halfway into the movie my enjoyment increased immensely. The racism overtures feel really heavy-handed, but it's probably better than them being too subtle in a children's movie.
4 / 5
The Jungle Book
Tremendous movie. Not much to say except possibly my most petty complaint of all time: I didn't think Neel Sethi was good as Mowgli. Obviously, kid actors should have a different standard to aspire to, but every other aspect of this Jon Favreau production is so slick that he really sticks out. I don't blame him at all - he's acting and reacting to a bunch of blue screen, but it still hurt my enjoyment a little. Like I said, this is my pettiest critique of all time and I'm not proud of it, but I have to be honest.
4 / 5
X-Men: Apocalypse
A worthy, yet somewhat muddled, successor to X-Men: Days of Future Past. To be clear: if you're in the camp that thought X2, First Class, or DOFP were "trash," you will not like this movie. I don't understand people that fall into that camp on even a basic level. If you're on board with Fox's X-Men universe and Singer's entries in it, you'll probably really enjoy this movie.
Weak points include Apocalypse being fairly one-night, too much disaster porn at a time when it feels like we're finally getting away from it, and a weirdly-paced first act. There's also a missed opportunity with Quicksilver, and Magneto flips a little too easily at the end. Finally certain characters like Storm and Jubilee get shortchanged, but it's an ensemble superhero team movie - there's always a limit.
Highlights for me include seeing the Nightcrawler of my dreams on-screen and given quite a bit more spotlight than I expected based on pre-release media, another amazing Quicksilver scene (which I liked better than the DOFP one by virtue of its song choice), and far less Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) than the trailers implied. I also loved the setup at the end which puts everything in place for an amazing "90's X-Men" movie, complete with the most accurate costumes the series has seen outside of Deadpool.
For me:
Days of Future Past > X2: X-Men United > Apocalypse > First Class >>> X-Men >>> the other dogshit
4 / 5
The Big Short
Absolutely loved this one. Sharply-written, clever, inventive, well-edited, star-studded, really the whole package. This movie is so packed to the gills with greatness, it's hard to believe the director's previous movie was fucking Anchorman 2.
5 / 5
Dark Places
Charlize Theron in a thriller based on a murder-mystery Gillian Flynn novel? Sign me up!
...is what I thought when I saw the trailer. And then I saw the movie, and... it really highlights how much David Fincher brought to the table when adapting Gone Girl. This movie, in comparison, thinks itself really clever even when the twists are plainly obvious. I also found the basic premise of the movie pretty ridiculous, and that's not even including the climax which hits the pedal full-throttle on the way to crazytown. And no, the actual climax isn't nearly as fun as I make it sound. It kinda reaches "so bad it's good" levels but doesn't quite make it.
I love Charlize in almost anything but she was either miscast or poorly directed here. She tries to play a sullen massacre-survivor, but it mostly comes off as sleepwalking. Nick Hoult does the best he does, but I found his character pretty annoying and pointless. Movie wasn't a total waste of time but I'm glad I didn't pay for it (one of the few movies I've watched on Amazon Prime.)
2 / 5
The Heat
I saw the trailers for this way back when and thought it looked fun, if a bit cliche. And that's pretty much what the movie ended up being. I'm giving this one a slight bump because once the movie gets rolling, it never lets up and it's fairly clever and inventive with some of its joke setups.
4 / 5