TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

With my Breaking Bad  poster, Walter White bobble head and crafted Heisenberg drinking mug, you could say I have a whole lot of Bryan Cranston splattered around my college dorm room. I've enjoyed the man ever since seventh grade, watching Malcolm in the Middle reruns on FX before the middle school bus picked me up. I would've been only 12 when Breaking Bad had its series premiere on television, but after catching up after I graduated high school, it was astonishing, (for hundreds of reasons). But one of the biggest achievements critics and fans point out so often was Cranston's ability to play the silly, childlike Hal, and then to troubled meth kingpin Walter White. Cranston shows us why he's won a Golden Globe, 6 Emmys and 4 SAG Awards in the past several years, as he transforms (a lot of it is that gravely, smokey voice: I wonder did he actual smoke the cigarettes that he's inevitable seen with in nearly every scene of the film?) into blacklisted screenwriter D...

No one can ever say the Golden Globes are predictable. Phew. I'm so glad we have getting stranded in the middle of space and the 2008 financial crisis to laugh at because APPARENTLY these are two of the best comedies 2015 had to offer. Remarkable. Also I learned valuable lessons, like you can't always bank on Meryl Streep (and if you do, then bank on Maggie Smith, who over the years has just become one hilariously cranky awards statue from all of her wins), not to underestimate the power of Alicia Vikander, and to always remember the movies that came before the November-December Oscar season (sorry for leaving you out Danny Collins !) Without further ado, here are the major film category nominations for the Globes, and ones I missed/left out are in red. The list is notable for having completely gotten one field wrong, and another entirely correct! What can I say, it's the week before exams. DRAMA FILM:  Spotlight Carol The Revenant Mad Max: Fury Road (I could ex...

Feel lucky, ladies and gentlemen, for we're witnessing the peak, the pinnacle, the highest point of Ben Affleck's directorial career so far.  I can't obviously speak for his next project, but Affleck can't stop winning when it comes to directing.  Who knew a guy who starred in "Gigli," "Pearl Harbor" and "Surviving Christmas" could pull off a second act in Hollywood.  His debut feature, "Gone Baby Gone," was a grimy look at Boston's underworld, and had an extremely strong ensemble and a heartbreaking ending, the cast consisting of greats like Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Amy Ryan, who won an Oscar nomination for her bold work.  When his second effort "The Town" rolled out two years ago in the summer of '10, I was disappointingly too young to attend the hard-R flick.  It amassed even higher lauding, and Affleck directed another one of his costars into a supporting Oscar nomination: Jeremy Renner.  So now, the bi...