TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

I've been saying to friends and family that the fact we're living in the year twenty fifteen sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. And it was! (Thank you, Back to the Future Part II ). But let's go back to last year for the last time and examine some of the best written/acted/directed roles of 2014. Whether it was a wicked music teacher, a teen with cancer or simply a man driving his car, these are the actors, in alphabetical order, who grabbed my attention this year. EMILY BLUNT as Rita in EDGE OF TOMORROW- Emily Blunt had an incredible 2014, starring in this action flick that got a lot of critics and audiences calling this "underrated" and standing out in the musical ensemble Into the Woods .  I thought it was an inventive movie but didn't wow me. What we can all agree on is Blunt's performance. Hopefully, after great turns in Looper  and The Adjustment Bureau this will cement her as one of the best action stars of today. She's fearless as...

Hype for a movie varies a lot nowadays. Social media, and websites like this one, blogs and whatnot, can carry a movie a long ways. Movie stars aren't enough in today's world I don't believe. You don't really need an A-listers presence to tell a good story anymore, and the ushering in of special effects has also helped in this. Websites like Metacritic, IMDb and primarily Rotten Tomatoes tell you if you should invest your $8.50 into a couple of hours of entertainment. Part of Boyhood's strategy, at least some of it anyway, of getting butts into seats was toting its incredibly rare 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, which has since dropped to a much less impressive 99% after two critics disliked it. And you can listen to those two people, who I'm sure have very valid opinions...or you could listen to the other 176 people, make that 177 now including me, who are citing Boyhood as one of the finest movies this year, and an accomplishment in the world of cinema. It'...

Reading the reviews of Richard Linklater's Boyhood , you just start to get emotional simply getting the feel of what the movie is going to be about. For a while it had a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, a feat movies like The Godfather  have only accomplished on the site. There's no negative backlash yet, nothing that could hurt the chances of everyone on board. Boyhood  has all the elements of a movie that will win Best Picture at this year's Academy Awards. Look at the facts: every single Best Picture nominee last year was released from October on, kicking off with the special effects extravaganza Gravity . A movie hasn't won Best Picture since 2009's The Hurt Locker , which got an extremely low-key limited release in the summer. I remember wanting to see it, then seeing it explode into pop culture once the Golden Globe nominations weren't released. The bottom line: you have to have your movie released later for the voters to remember you. But Boyhood  seems...