TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

I just watched The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 1  yesterday, and I have to say it is the polar opposite of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's Birdman or (The Virtue of Ignorance) . Despite the pretentiously long name (just pick one or the other!) Birdman  is the movie with the Hollywood cast that's very Broadway, very independent, and very...alive. Of course, anyone who has seen it knows that Michael Keaton's Riggan berates a critic, saying that he takes risks being an actor, but what does she have to lose? This in effect makes this movie critic proof...but Inarritu and his brilliant cast need not worry, this movie is fantastic, and will surely pick up a trophy or two come Oscar time. Mid-life crises, putting on troubled plays, family dysfunction are all themes here that have been explored to death in other movies, but Birdman has a way of taking them, flipping them on their head and analyzing them in a way that feels fresh and electric. The closest thing I can say it is co...

What's the last big movie SNL alum Will Ferrell has been in?  "The Other Guys," way back in 2010.  In that film, Mark Wahlberg played the straight man cop in that buddy movie, and Ferrell was the predictably goofy Allen Gamble.  Ferrell plays the Michael Scott-type-person of authority who's not sure how he got the place in power and he's not sure what to do.  In simpler terms, he plays really hilarious idiots.  Of course, not all of his movies land, just look at "Land of the Lost" and "Semi-Pro."  But the reason America's never turned its back on Ferrell and why he's a god in high school kid's standards (you know the type, who can recite "Anchorman" verbatim) is because his shtick totally works, and hasn't really failed.  In "Everything Must Go" Naturally he's capable of more dramatic work, the man's a genius!  His bitingly sad role in "Everything Must Go" was the anti Will Ferrell, a ...