TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

After cleaning up handsomely at the Golden Globes, and getting a whopping twelve nominations at the Academy Awards (with Mad Max: Fury Road coming in a close second place!), the casual moviegoer is probably becoming very intrigued with seeing Alejandro G. Innáritu's The Revenant . On paper it's maybe not such an easy sell: a man is left for dead by a greedy trapper and he has to fight is way back to exact revenge. That's it: a fairly simple plot. So is it worth your dollar? Absolutely: if you don't mind a little blood. And by a little I mean one of the most violent movies I saw in the 2015 movie year, right behind The Hateful Eight but still well in front of Kingsman . It also has some shades of Angelina Jolie's Unbroken . If you hate Leonardo DiCaprio, see this movie, because you get to watch him suffer what regular people would break under: unendurable circumstances. When he's not almost mercy killed by his men he's getting buried alive. When he's no...

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...

If James Franco's Alien from "Spring Breakers" had Leonardo DiCaprio's Gatsby's millions and Christian Bale's foul mouth from "American Hustle"...they still wouldn't come close to the living extremity of a man that is Jordan Belfort. The cocaine-devouring, hooker-purchasing, finance exploiting stockbroker with a rags-to-riches past is the latest examination of Martin Scorsese in this explicit, bonkers 80's-set epic. Like the aforementioned Gatsby, DiCaprio shows us with his third consecutive thrilling performance (also as a conniving slave owner in "Django Unchained") why he's one of Hollywood's greatest, currently or otherwise. "WOWS" begins, as movies typically do, with a number of stockbrokers hurling a helmet-clad dwarf against a large target bathed in money signs, and here's the thing: it sets the tone for the next three hours. That's right: 180 minutes. It is single-handedly the movie's vital ...

Here's the irony I had walking into Baz Lurhmann's "The Great Gatsby:" most people who I've talked to refer to "Gatsby" as that book that they had to read in their high school English class.  As someone who's currently enrolled in a high school English class...I've never read "The Great Gatsby," mostly because I'd assumed we'd have gotten to it by now, but...nope.  We did however watch half of the 1974 Jack Clayton version starring Robert Redford, which was, to say the least, romantic but dry.  I was hoping this version wouldn't share these undesirable qualities. Luhrmann, the real star of the film Wow, is it good to be right. Luhrmann's "Gatsby," which was moved from December 2012 to now for some reason, is a gorgeous film with enormous scope and, dare I say, brave decisions.  All my peers had raved about the "Gatsby" adaptation, but then again they did the same for "Iron Man 3," and ...

Wow. I've been anticipating this movie for EVER . The constant reviews flaunting: "It will change the way movies are made" and "Matrix meets James Bond" were very encouraging, even though I hadn't seen either of those films. I finally found someone who was interested in going and headed into the theater knowing maybe 5% what this movie was really about. Oh. My. God. Chris Nolan, the same dude who made every one's favorite sequel "The Dark Knight" 2 years ago returns with this modern masterpiece about dreams. I've seen at least 3 sequels already this year, and even though they were all great, I'm expecting what's going to happen because they're treading on familiar territory. IT GETS OLD, GUYS. "Inception" is a huge breath of fresh air that takes whatever you thought you knew about this film, turns it upside down and slaps you silly with something new at every corner. Alfred Hitchcock once said "If the audien...