The Tea Table

There are three kinds of dumb when it comes to narrative in cinema. There’s comedic dumb, reserved for comedy, there is popcorn flick dumb, commonly found in action flicks, bonkers dumb, which can be hard to pull off but when executed properly can generate great buzz, and WTF dumb, which has no reason or rhyme for being there, making the viewer scratch their head as to what they are actually seeing is actually a movie. Okay, yes, that’s four, but the last one we hope only appears as a fluke or briefly in any type of film. Godzilla: King of Monsters- sorry- King of THE Monsters, is loaded heavily with that kind of dumb and no so much the popcorn flick dumb we all expect it to be.   Now to be fair, I’m not a huge Godzilla fan; I grew up on reruns of the Godzilla cartoon on Cartoon Network and beyond that, other than common pop lore, that’s all I know about Tokyo’s favorite city destroyer (or savior?). That was until the 2014 Godzilla, where I am somewhat bias. The film crew cam...

*Heavy Spoiler, Read at Your Own Risk!* Don’t let the name fool you; Francis Coppola’s movie has nothing to do with the apocalypse but it can feel like it as it takes place in the heart of the Vietnam conflict. There are explosions left and right, casualties on all sides, bullets flying everywhere and just when you think it’s safe…BAM! There’s a freaking tiger! It’s an ugly gritty film that won numerous awards and accolades (the cinematography I can agree with but everything else is a perspective I can’t get on) so much so that it’s considered one of the greatest films of all time (for some reason). To be a worthy film, it must a make you think and make you feel. While it certainly makes me think, it also makes me want to vomit. To be fair, what I saw was the theatrical version, not the 10 other numerous versions. So let’s get started with the train wreck shall we?  First of all there’s the drug lucid opening. The protagonist Captain Willard is staring up at the ceilin...

It's been a while, huh? It's been a busy year and I don't think these next few weeks are going to get less hectic. Some new content will be arriving soon so keep your eyes peeled!

To describe Napping Princess would be like trying to give a brief description of Japanese pop culture. It’s one of those movies that must be seen in person and requires some thinking. It can be emotional at times and confusing as hell in other parts but it’ll make you laugh and for what it’s worth, it’s full of heart. And that’s a good thing.             Here’s a brief synopsis: Kokone Morikawa has vivid dreams of a fairy tale, elements of which seem to crisscross into the real world. This dreams are so real in fact, they open the movie, confusing both myself and some audience members if I was watching the right movie. Kokone’s father, a brilliant mechanic, is acting more withdrawn than usual and is arrested, accused of stealing technology from a powerful corporation. She sets out on a journey to save him, with her mysterious dreams providing the answers she might need.          ...

It finally happened…sort of. The core seven aren’t all there but with some misfires, two directors, and a necessary mustache, Justice League finally hit the big screens. Was it everything we the movie going audience asked for? Well that’s where things get tricky. Thankfully, I will break it down into the PROS, OKAY, CONS, and WTF.             Firstly, there are two important things about this movie that have to be addressed. One, due to a personal matter, director Zack Snyder had to drop out during production. Warner Brothers quickly accommodated by bring in Avengers director Josh Whedon to finish up production and to do reshoots. Both directors have a different tone of filming and that is apparent in this film but the effort is there to make the two tones blend together. The other is when the reshoots were going on, Superman aka Henry Cavill was also shooting for the next Mission Impossible movie. Paramount refused Cavil to b...

The problem with a mystery is that once the mystery is solved the surprise of the reveal disappears. It’s one of the reasons why I can’t watch Gone Girl again; once everything is unveiled for better or for worse it feels very deflated and it’s a movie you tell your friends just see it once just to see how messed up it is. There are very few ways to bring an audience into watching a film: one) either by cinematography or special effects for lovers of cinema or for film studies but that won’t bring in a lot of numbers or two) the actors performances. In the remake of Murder on the Orient Express , the movie strives to do both things but with the later falling just short.             Fair disclosure, I have not read nor watched another adaptation of the Agatha Christie mystery novel (the only one I’ve seen is Ten Little Indians ). As of writing, I don’t know how different the movie’s plot deviates from the original work or if it ...