TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

Picture this wintery image to help you stay cool this summery day: 2012-era Travis going on to Crackle, the (legal!!!) free movie streaming site and picking Joe Cornish's amusing Attack the Block as a snow day diversion. The sci-fi comedy about South London teens experiencing an alien invasion was notoriously difficult for us Americans to comprehend, which led to the distributors pondering if they wanted to include subtitles. I think Warner Bros., the producer of Christopher Nolan's latest Dunkirk, should invest in captioning the war picture, because my inability to decipher at least 50% of what the soldiers in the film were saying diminished the enjoyability of the product. We start with...well, in all transparency, you won't remember any of the names of the soldiers in Dunkirk, so I'm employing IMDb to its fullest. I remember George because his name was said about 50 times in the movie, and once you'll see it you'll understand why. But we start off with Tomm...

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...

What a lovely day to be a film buff. In fact, what a lovely year to be a sci-fi nerd of any kind. When there's big fare like George Miller's return to the "Mad Max" franchise in three decades with Fury Road , blockbusters like Age of Ultron and indie side dishes like Ex Machina , a nerd's palate is sure to be quenched. Of course, these are just appetizers until the mother of all science fiction franchises releases its long awaited film near Christmas, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip . Until that sure to be Oscar winner is released, Fury Road will be a fine placeholder, and a perfect shot of adrenaline for movie buffs familiar with Max or not. I binge-watched the two sequels leading up to this movie, The Road Warrior and  Beyond Thunderdome . Both were enormous servings of adrenaline and creativity, especially the latter, which might've been my favorite until I walked into the theater, anxiously awaiting the start of this film, as EIGHT TRAILERS pass...

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...

Unlike me, the Washington Post rarely gives out four star reviews, and when they do it's for sure a movie to be taken notice of. Their most recent one to my knowledge was Guardians of the Galaxy , a very fitting rating for such a fantastic piece of pop art. So back when, around April or so, I saw Locke  got it's highest possible rating, I added it instantly to my list of movies to check out for later. When I finally got the opportunity to watch it, I popped it in with eagerness, anxious to see how if it's praise and lauding was legit...and I've never been so thankful for the Washington Post. This review may be short, as describing what Locke concerns is giving away the movie's very element of surprise, how it creeps up on you. How you slowly, and this is all I'll say, start to realize that, however confident and reassuring his Ivan Locke may appear, Tom Hardy plays a man who in the course of a few hours begins to experience his life deteriorate before him, va...

When things become a sucess, I don't know, I feel like I missed them, I blink, and all of a sudden they're a huge success.  Like the TV show "Modern Family."  I decided I'd give it a chance because I love Ed O'Neil from "Married...with Children," and of course the pilot killed.  By the end of the first season people were declaring it one of the best sitcoms ever, it had enormous Emmy buzz...and I just feel like I missed the moment where "Modern Family" became this massive success.  I love the show though, it's one of the few new things on TV I watch nowadays.  That's why I feel accomplished when I'm able to see a superstar being born in Tom Hardy when I watched "The Dark Knight Rises" last week.  "Inception" already made him a breakout star back in 2010, but his performance as Bane really cemented his celebrity status.  I don't even like that word "celebrity," it cemented his status as a gifted,...

"Warrior" is a unique sports movie that actually doesn't make the same mistake so many others make of focusing on the sport instead of the players.  A generic sports movie, say "Gridiron Gang" lacked heart, and what it suffered in performances, it surpassed in emotional speeches.  "Warrior" features a sport so brutal, it's hard to picture any of its players being anything but insane. The premise of "Warrior" starts out believable...but in all fairness, it turns out extremely unlikely.  Paddy, (played so well by Nick Nolte in this movie he gets his own paragraph in this review) is an ex-alcoholic who wants to reconnect with his sons.  That plot point right there has sappy potential.  But the film goes another way.  Instead of being glad his dad wants to be back in his life, Tommy (Tom Hardy, who gives a ferocious performance that seems to have gone unnoticed because of Nolte's tour de force work here) rejects his old man, and in the ...

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...