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...

In the movie buzz universe, nothing has been making a bigger splash than superhero news. Constant updates on the Batman vs. Superman vs. Wonder Woman vs. Lex Luthor vs. the World  project are going up, a Justice League movie in development, Ant Man ! Never before has the genre been more powerful or successful, especially with Age of Ultron  heading to theaters next summer. It's a good thing Marvel's most beloved superhero will be in it...oh wait a second... While Spider-Man may still be awaiting on a friend request he sent to the Avengers (I think it's actually just because of stupid studio politics he can't crossover) he gets his sequel to the reboot of a trilogy that had two really great films and one bloated villain sandwich of a third. As a kid, it was always Dr. Octopus, the Joker and the Rhino for my favorite bad guys, and seeing the latter two portrayed so well onscreen gave me hope for both the Rhino and Electro in this film, and to a lesser extent Harry Osb...

An appropriate "Wait, what?" was expressed by all when it was announced a Spider-Man reboot was getting a release this summer.  "Spider-Man 3," the one movie every one seems to hate but I kind of liked back in 2007.  5 years?  Is that all the time they're waiting to restart? Where's Mary Jane?  And then, once the cast was revealed, I gained a lot of faith.  In 2010 Andrew Garfield (Peter Parker) and Emma Stone (Gwen Stacy) both released movies that showed they were ready if not overqualified to take on big Hollywood roles, in "The Social Network" and "Easy A" respectively.  These roles earned them Golden Globe nominations and an established part of young Hollywood, or whatever they want to call themselves these days.  And then the million dollar question still remained: would it go in the direction of "The Avengers," or southbound, a la "Green Lantern." I'm not sure if the box office success will match it, but th...

I saw "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" last week and was pretty impressed by it.  I was going to write up a review talking about how much I liked it and how great Andy Serkis was as Caesar, the ape responsible for the whole "Planet of the Apes" thing and how the characters came in 2nd to the awesome visual effects, but then I saw "The Help" just yesterday.  And it blew my mind. The film, as one might already know, is the adaptation of the "wildly popular" bestselling novel about maids in the South and how one rambunctious woman tries to put their predicament into a book and reach the nation to tell how these maids are struggling.  The novel was probably popular with adults, no one my age that I know of has ever read or heard of the book "The Help."  Maybe due to its subject matter; the book is very racially charged and has several uses of racist terminology. The movie's mood reminds me of several other racially charged films, ...