TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

I'm late! Let's jump into it. 5. PARASITE I opened up Bong Joon-ho's Snowpiercer on Netflix my freshman year expecting for a decent action/thriller headed by Chris Evans. What I got was a spectacular action thriller that stated no matter where you are in life there will be a class system separating the poor and rich. Building off that theme we are treated to the foreign darling of the year, the Palme d'Or winner and possibly even Best Picture winner by next month, Parasite . Difficult to review without revealing too much, just know through a single connection Kim Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) begins to weasel his entire family into the wealthy Park brood's mansion. The rest, as every BuzzFeed article you see scrolling through Facebook announces, will shock you. Startlingly original, most films on this list ranked higher I have seen some version of. To Parasite 's credit, there is nothing like it. Find your local arthouse theater and go see it! 4. UNCUT GEMS Aft...

With a number of people I exchanged this scary thought: I wasn't as hyped for The Last Jedi as I was two years ago for The Force Awakens . And then they did something even scarier: they agreed with me. For Episode VII , there were many factors in its favor: there hadn't been a live-action Star Wars film in a decade, there hadn't been a good Star Wars movie since 1983 (alright, that one is my opinion), Disney had bought Lucasfilm and Daisy Ridley was an unknown for the lead. Two years ago I listed the film as my third favorite movie of the year, a bronze medal in Olympic terms. Now I wouldn't be so sure. I've watched it again since 2015, where I was in a theater full of like-minded fans hoping to be rekindled by the galaxy far, far away. It is indisputably a soft remake of A New Hope , but I suppose I was one of the sheep who liked being herded into someplace familiar. With Last Jedi ...I didn't know what to expect. I knew the characters going in now, I knew Luke...

You would've thought I ran track in high school seeing how fast I jumped on the "Star Wars" bandwagon when I found out that The Force Awakens was coming out near Christmas of 2015. The prequels, especially Revenge of the Sith , were popular with my nerdy friends as I was growing up, but I truly didn't get the appeal until I started getting into the Academy Awards, and found something bizarre to me: A New Hope was nominated for Best Picture? I popped it in my tiny foot-wide VHS television when I was 14 and watched tiny Han and tiny Chewie on the Millennium Falcon on a snow day. I'll probably take lashings for that in the afterworld where movie critics go, but after re-watching the original trilogy and the prequels last year on much better means of visual projection. After my college exams I saw Episode VII last year on the official opening day, December 18. I repeated that with seeing the new stand-alone film, Rogue One , last night, with a year's worth a hype ...

I watched A New Hope when I was 14, on my tiny VHS-exclusive TV in my room. I didn't understand a majority of it, and it was a crime to watch that 1977 special effects beauty on my miniature television, so this past summer I've tried to atone for my movie buff sins (YOUHAVENTSEENALLTHESTARWARSMOVIESWHATSWRONGWITHYOUYOURENOTAREALMOVIEFAN) etc. I watched the entire original trilogy, but the summer ran out with the person I was watching them with (no way I, who needed a guide through the galaxy on my first run was watching them alone) and I didn't get to see the prequels. I'm sure some fans out there envy me, some will probably advise me to stay away from them. But I've now still only seen 4 out of 7 Star Wars  movies. The saga never interested me as a kid, when Revenge of the Sith came out when I was in fifth grade I remember being overwhelmed and bored by the nerds I hung out with because they wouldn't shut up about it. So why was I so pumped to stand in line for...