TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

My New Years resolution? Pay more attention to this blog! If you look back on the posts, there's a six month gap between my Oscar predictions and my first review of the year, July's All Eyez on Me (which actually does make a spot one of these lists below). I'm going to be probably stepping away from the predictions this year. A friend of mine has sparked my interest in creating a YouTube channel where I can post reviews, not necessarily like the ones on this blog, but I'll keep y'all updated. This list was intentionally late, because I wanted to make sure I saw all of the films that I wanted to to make the best possible list. My last semester of college starts tomorrow, and I'm confident I saw all of the 2017 movies that I really wanted to. Though it pains me to exclude films I've loved like LEGO Batman , The Big Sick and Mudbound , I wish you all a productive 2017 and hope 2018 has even better cinema to come! 5. LOGAN LUCKY A complete left-field surp...

We really don't deserve Hugh Jackman. He's made nine on-screen appearances as Wolverine, including his most recent/final/best outing in James Mangold's Logan  this year. With almost decades with the claws on, I'm glad to see him usher in a new era of his career as P.T. Barnum in Michael Gracy's The Greatest Showman . An original musical with the music team Pasek and Paul, fresh off Oscar wins for La La Land , I was excited to see Jackman in the lead. His Jean Valjean, whose veins we got to see in full throttle in Les Miz, was an intense revelation, a testament to the fact that Jackman can beat up bad guys but also belt out tunes. And though it might appear that this is his sole vehicle, there's a lot of talent that gets introduced in The Greatest Showman , and for the most part this movie delivers. First, it's important to direct you to the film's Rotten Tomatoes page. It seems to have the opposite problem of The Last Jedi, which notoriously has a 91% ...

The generic cup of Guillermo del Toro's latest, The Shape of Water , runneth over. It is fantastical, horrific in points, a musical element (I won't spoil that surprise), intense psychological drama, comedic moments courtesy of the always-fabulous Octavia Spencer and Richard Jenkins, and of course, as the amphibian man will tip off to you, sci-fi. But if I had Michael Shannon pointing a gun to my head (and let's be honest, with the performances he gives, that might not be out of the realm of possibility), I'd label The Shape of Water a romance. It's ruminations of love and hate and the ways we can show love, express it, would be goopy and syrupy in the hands of a lesser director, but del Toro is full-on freaky fairy tale here, and if you're wondering why the movie with the big green fish man is getting nominated for so many awards, I suggest you read my review. Of course, the magic of this movie is that you don't have to choose. It's gruesome, it's...