TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

It's been a hard year, y'know? Nothing made me happier than to ring in the new year last night with friends and family. I know what you may think: years are arbitrary markers of time, what difference does it make? Even if 2017 isn't an automatic clean slate for us all, it's what it represents, isn't it? And that's all the cinema is, life represented. This year offered a lot of hope...and superhero movies. In my personal selections of the five greatest films released this year (1/1/16-12/31/16), you'll see reoccurring themes of grief, family, hope, identity. It was a stellar year for the movies, and the fact that I had to leave gripping films like Love & Friendship , Nocturnal Animals , Hacksaw Ridge and Sausage Party (my ultimate guilty pleasure) off the final cut. And I still haven't movies I've been dying to see like Fences , The Lobster or Hell or High Water . Revel in the new year with me and enjoy my list! 5. SING STREET I nodded knowingl...

Even though this admits my guilt to my mind wandering a little, I realized that while watching Civil War this was the Marvel Cinematic Universe's thirteenth film. Besides Bond and probably those awful Transformers movies because audiences keep feeding Michael Bay's ego, how many franchises can say that? Additionally, how many can say that just about all of the films in their franchise have been well received? Most people cite the second Iron Man film as the worst, (and personally I think Iron Man 3 was a poorly executed film), but there isn't really a stinker in there. They're all fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, they all made obscene amounts of money...it's pretty impressive. Some have noted how the Marvel films are all fairly similar, at least in tone and the formula that follows a TV episode of thwarting the bad guy at the end of it. That's why they bring in directors to genre bend. Sometimes it works, when the Russo brothers (who directed this edition) make a 70s...