Crimson Peak

Guillermo Del Toro has outdone himself again with this visual masterpiece. My friend had this movie and the second I found out dead people were involved I asked them if it was scary-- they said no and my official verdict is that they need to learn the difference between a scary movie and a not scary movie because this movie is just a step down from Mama. And in fact, the ghosts in this movie moved and interacted with the characters in a very similar way the ghost "Mama" did in Mama, so I'm beginning to think Guillermo Del Toro has a style to his demon or ghost characters and, while it freaked me out immensely, I really really enjoy it.

Mad Max Series

There is a movie theatre in my city where, if you go at 10:00pm and have a student ID, tickets are $1.00. They just finished a four week long Mad Max Marathon, showing the next Mad Max in the series each week. Me and three of my friends went every Friday night at 10:00pm for four weeks straight with everything building up to Mad Max: Fury Road in 3D. After seeing the first Mad Max we all kind of accepted that we were just going so that we could make it to week four aka Fury Road week. And honestly, if those tickets had been more than $1 each it wouldn't have been worth it, but they were, so it was an experience worth having.

Deadpool

Deadpool is an interesting specimen of movie because the main reasons I went to see this was 1. the action sequences were going to be amazing and 2. I want to support R-rated Marvel movies-- I was not expecting to really like this movie and yet, I really liked this movie. Most of the promo you see is a lot of sex jokes and that really turned me off of this movie pretty quick, but the majority of his jokes in the movie are just him being an asshole, and I find that super funny. I think this movie, or at least the humor in this movie, will likely be a hit or a miss for a lot of people.

Book to Movie Adaptations

As a rule I do not see (most) book to movie adaptations. There is nothing worse than a bad book to movie adaptation. I nearly cried when I saw that they had made a movie of my favorite book series, The Maze Runner, because I saw what they did to Twilight, My Sister's Keeper, The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, The Hobbit, every Stephen King novel EVER and every other damn book that I love.  I swear a part of my heart dies every times one of my near and dear books get a movie adaptation. I especially have an issue with the way they adapt YA novels, but even some books that are not of the YA genre these same things happen.
There are movies like Wild, and The Big Short that are books based on real life events. I have not had an issue with any of these type of adaptations and largely I haven't read any of the books these kinds of movies are based on, so I realize I have positively reviewed many movies based on books, that are based on real life events, but these aren't the one's I am really talking about.

Spotlight

Spotlight is a movie that throws you against a wall, coddles you when it realizes you're hurt, then punches you in the face when it sees it's just a few scratches--it is absolutely brutal on your emotions. I did not actually want to see this movie, I didn't think it looked that interesting. Granted, I didn't actually know the extent of what this movie was exploring. I was not aware of just how big this story was. I think Spotlight executed this touchy topic really appropriately. It's done with a lot of care; that isn't to say that they tiptoed around the reality of the situation. There were parts where some of the things discussed were hard to listen to, but they were handled with a sensitive tone. I guess what I am saying is so many words is that, despite the situation being pretty gruesome and, frankly, gross, the information presented was not done to gross out and appall the audience. It was more to inform and the events were not exploited in order to increase shock value for the audience. I think that was extremely respectful, while also trying to inform the audience of the reality.
This movie points a spotlight on the section of the Boston Globe called "Spotlight" that in 2001 investigated the sex-abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and attempted to expose those who are committing these crimes, and in fact, the Spotlight team divulges more than they ever thought they would.

The Revenant

This movie was goddamn phenomenal (and based on a true story). The shot composition, the landscape, the dialogue (or lack thereof), the way the storyline is pieced together, the actual execution of filming--it's all amazing. Leonardo DeCaprio is amazingly expressive in this movie and his lack of dialogue does not impede on his ability to emote and tell the audience what is going on. I thought if there was going to be one weak performance it would have beenWill Poulter, who is usually cast as the villain in YA movies. He actually played his character phenomenally well. Adding to the amazingness of this movie was the fact that every performance was on point. They were all on target with the tone of the movie; not one of the performances diverted from the vibe everyone else was giving off. Every actor was on it in every scene. This movie did an incredible thing where they pulled all these actors who have had a big few years as side-characters or as co-stars (with the exception of Leo DeCap) and put them all in a parts where each of their talents are exemplified and made into an incredibly compelling performance. It was so breathtaking how brutal this movie actually was as well; the director makes you sit through a whole lot of hard things only to deliver redemption to the audience in the last hour.

The Big Short

The Big Short is a really inventive movie; it's like The Wolf of Wall Street mixed with Too Big To Fail. It was super funny and super dark-- often at the same time. The Big Short's most impressive accomplishment is making our mysterious stock market seem understandable to the normal movie goer. With all the talent that's packed into this movie there's no real place for weak performances, however, I was surprised how Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, Steve Carrell and Ryan Gosling were advertised as the main characters when really I thought Steve Carrell and Christian Bale were the actual main characters and Brad Pitt was just there to aid two characters played by virtually unknown actors. Ryan Gosling reminded me of a less egotistical version of Leonardo DeCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street. I wouldn't have been so confused in the beginning if the previews and trailers for the movie reflected the actual cast and their roles. In the trailer I saw it showed two of the main characters played by lesser known actors once together and one alone. In both shots they just look like bank executives and neither of them speak at all so I didn't appreciate it when these two guys were all in my movie when I really just wanted to see the four big wig names.