Box office report: “Chappie”
By Jack Heyden
March 19, 2015
There are only so many hypothetical portrayals of the future that you can lay in front of an audience until a film loses credibility, and that is exactly where “Chappie” went astray. Telling lies has always been a major gray area in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. In fantasy, you can get away wit...
Box Office Report: “The Theory of Everything”
By Jack Heyden
February 5, 2015
Bearing a haunting resemblance to 2001’s “A Beautiful Mind,” “The Theory of Everything” wonderfully unveils a biography boiling with heartbreak and reality without glazing over a period in history. The film takes a look at the relationship between esteemed physicist Stephen Hawking and his w...
Box Office Report: “Inherent Vice”
By Jack Heyden
January 29, 2015
I don’t know what the hell I just saw, but I liked it. You know those films that you see and can barely follow because there’s so much going on, but then after straining your mind for an hour, it suddenly hits you? That was me about halfway through this film. Ever since I saw “The Master,...
Box Office Report: “Big Eyes”
By Jack Heyden
January 25, 2015
In his most recent film, “Big Eyes,” Tim Burton’s far too unrealistic depiction of this true story took too many of his own artistic liberties. The story shouldn’t have been about Walter Keane’s insanity, but more about the suffrage of Margaret Keane, his wife, played by Amy Adams. Walter, played...
Box Office Report: “The Gambler”
By Jack Heyden
December 30, 2014
When “The Gambler” was at its best, it was a decent film, but when it struggled it wasn’t much more than a sports film with an affinity for Blackjack. Structurally, the movie was sound, and I had the pleasure of explaining how everything pieced together very well to a fellow moviegoer who didn’...
Box Office Report: “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1”
By Jack Heyden
November 27, 2014
Ever since the separation of the final Harry Potter book into two films, I have had a problem with prolonging a story for the sake of doubling your money. It’s a great strategy for a production company to do so, but in this method you sacrifice the attention and overall interest of your audience. It ...
Box Office Report: “Birdman”
By Jack Heyden
November 20, 2014
I knew that Michael Keaton would be playing a mirage of himself (given that both he and his character were both formerly cast as megastar superheroes), and I knew that I was going to like what I saw on the screen. It was by far the most original film I have seen in a very long time — not solely for...
Box Office Report: “Interstellar”
By Jack Heyden
November 13, 2014
This was genuinely the greatest experience I’ve ever had inside of a movie theater. Even though it was in IMAX, it still was the most emotionally and visually compelling film I have ever seen in a theater. The only other film I could think of that would rival the experience I had in “Interstellar...
Box Office Report: “Nightcrawler”
November 6, 2014
“Nightcrawler” is a film that was well aware of its intentions from the outset. The first thing we see in the film is the lead character beat someone up for a watch when that someone catches him stealing scrap metal. By showing us this as the opening scene, we know that Lou Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal...
Box Office Report: “John Wick”
October 30, 2014
My thought process walking out (or escaping) the theater was to label “John Wick” as either bad or really bad depending on how pissed off traffic made me on the ride home. And I will say that I hit more red lights than I intended to. The film concerns a retired hit man played by Keanu Reeves, who bre...
Box Office Report: ‘Fury’
October 23, 2014
Quite possibly vying to be the biggest surprise of Oscar season, “Fury” is a driven movie capable of evoking strong emotions in any viewer. At first glance it might seem to be another rudimentary war film, cookie cut with a star-studded cast and dazzling special effects; however, it was far more dev...
