Collateral Beauty (2017) - Movie Review

Every couple of years, Will Smith looks at an empty place on his mantle and decides that he wants to fill that space with an Oscar. With that in mind, he goes into full-blown Oscar bait mode and stars in a vehicle meant to give him that acclaim. Unfortunately, up until this point, it hasn’t worked out for him yet. He’s gotten a couple of nominations for Best Actor, most recently in 2006 with The Pursuit Of Happiness, but he has yet to win one. Given the whole media furore over Leonardo DiCaprio’s similar position until his inevitable win for The Revenant, I don’t hold much stock in this need for this particular brand of validation, but nevertheless, he ends up bringing this side of himself to the screen every so often… with very little success, even ignoring the obvious intent behind it all.

I personally have a liking for some of his works in this style, like Seven Pounds and even last year’s Concussion, but there’s a very deliberate and manipulative air to most of them that ultimately make them fall short of their lofty ambitions. Then again, this is something that befalls an awful lot of Oscar hopefuls: They spend so much time trying to tap into some form of emotional complexity that the Academy loves so much, but they don’t spend enough taking a step back and realizing how those emotions are being presented to us and how insensitive it can get. And oh boy, nothing in recent memory embodies the term “insensitive” quite like today’s film.

Alice Through The Looking Glass (2016) - Movie Review

Whether it was listening to the original book on cassette tapes, watching the 1999 TV film version with Whoopi Goldberg as the Cheshire Cat or even playing Alice: Madness Returns back in high school, I have a very ingrained appreciation for the story of Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole into a world where pretty much nothing makes sense. As much as the more logical parts of my brain would like to say otherwise, this appreciation extends to the 2010 film by Tim Burton. It’s one of those rare films where I legitimately don’t care about the plot inconsistencies, of which there are plenty to be found there, and I’m willing to bet that my already-admitted fanboyism for Burton’s work has got something to do with it. Nevertheless, I liked the first film which means that I was probably the only person on Earth who wanted to see a sequel to it, which I also was... initially, at least. Am I going to defend this film as well, or am I going to join the crowd?