TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

It's been a hard year, y'know? Nothing made me happier than to ring in the new year last night with friends and family. I know what you may think: years are arbitrary markers of time, what difference does it make? Even if 2017 isn't an automatic clean slate for us all, it's what it represents, isn't it? And that's all the cinema is, life represented. This year offered a lot of hope...and superhero movies. In my personal selections of the five greatest films released this year (1/1/16-12/31/16), you'll see reoccurring themes of grief, family, hope, identity. It was a stellar year for the movies, and the fact that I had to leave gripping films like Love & Friendship , Nocturnal Animals , Hacksaw Ridge and Sausage Party (my ultimate guilty pleasure) off the final cut. And I still haven't movies I've been dying to see like Fences , The Lobster or Hell or High Water . Revel in the new year with me and enjoy my list! 5. SING STREET I nodded knowingl...

The odd couple troupe is one of the oldest cinema can offer: but if it ain't broke, right? The joy of The Nice Guys , a good turnaround for acclaimed writer/director Shane Black, who we last saw helm Iron Man 3 , is seeing these two Oscar-nominated actors play the camera for laughs. You don't think belly laughs when you think of Russell Crowe. Ryan Gosling was in last year's Oscar-winning comedy The Big Short , and he was pretty funny it, and we know he has chops from his "SNL" appearance. But they're generally seen as dramatic actors, so the joy of seeing them drive around 1970's L.A. with a hallucinatory creature is pretty spectacular. The plot (for a mystery, anyway) is much pretty straightforward, with a few curves and backtracks to make it juicy. Healy, a "hit man," as I like to call him, because he pretty much just punches you in the face (Crowe) comes to private eye Holland March's (Gosling) door, breaks his arm and tells him to not ...