Freeheld (2015) - Movie Review

I am becoming the very thing that I hate most. I have always maintained that there are a few key things that, hopefully, separate me from the more mainstream film press. Apart from my insistence on not allowing a person’s media enjoyment to reflect on a person’s character (i.e. not calling someone stupid because they like/don’t like something) and making every attempt possible to judge every film as equals, I also wanted to refrain from letting my own personal politics spill into my thoughts on a given film. Well, if you’ve been following me over the last month or so, you’ll know that I’ve been doing a craptastic job of that last one. I’ve been shoe-horning in my views on certain aspects of sexual politics numerous times here, even when it hasn’t been called for. To put it simply, I don’t want to become another Armond White and have my political views be the only thing that dictate how I watch/analyse a film. So, it should help that I’m almost forced to do the same here, given how this film directly deals with certain politically charged matters. I miss when I would just reference random pieces of pop culture for my jokes, rather than have to bring things down so much. Nevertheless, we still have a review to do here.

The Legend Of Hercules (2014) - Movie Review

The story of Hercules and his Twelve Labours is one of my favourite ancient legends, so much so that the only good essay I ever wrote back in high school was on it and the reasons behind the longevity of the story. It's a tale that has been adapted numerous times before and with good reason: It's a great story with lots of potential, full of action, cunning, darkness and redemption. However, even with that in mind, I find it kind of odd that we got not one but two movie adaptations of it this year alone. We’ve had Hercules starring Dwayne Johnson, which took a different spin on the story and looked more at the idea of Hercules being a literal legend, something I found quite fascinating. True, it didn’t completely succeed at that idea, and it had more than a few narrative issues, but overall it was a decent watch. Prior to that, we also had today’s film which is a relatively more straightforward telling of the origin of Hercules.