Joel Merritt

There is often a complaint about a lot of mobster films in that they glorify organized crime. That is not the case in this dramatic biopic covering the history of James ‘Whitey’ Bulger (Johnny Depp). Gone are the blood ties and familial/friendship bonds portrayed in films like The Godfather, Goodfellas and Depp’s own Donnie Brasco. […]

Insidious is a franchise that appears to be on the cusp of adding a creative twist to its earlier instalments. Insidious Chapter 3 plays it safe by both following formula while employing a few new ideas. To explain, I’m going to need to start by immediately spoiling the first two films. The first Insidious film […]

  Joel Merritt

There’s always a lot of worry when it comes to revisiting a franchise. After a lot of years have gone by and the demand for more has died out, there’s the question as to why the studio would even bother. In previous months, the sequel Mad Max: Fury Road definitely proved that you can go […]

  Joel Merritt

Harkening back to sci fi classics such as Forbidden Planet, the majority of Ex Machina is constituted of philosophical discussion and games of verbal chess. These discussions broach many thoughts on the nature of humanity, god/creation and the illusion of self in the digital era. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is an employee at Bluebook who wins […]

  Joel Merritt

Now here’s what I’m talking about. Just five episodes in, and we’ve hit what is one the show’s best episodes. It’s in this episode that the show really starts to push against some of its boundaries while beginning to develop some depth in character writing. We start off with the kids hanging out with Wendy […]

It Follows has a concept that sounds like it’s from a terrible B movie. An invisible, homicidal creature follows, at an incredibly slow pace, those that have sex with people that are already being followed. The comparison to B-movies is not entirely without merit, since the film clearly appears to pay homage to those types […]

  Joel Merritt

There are some ideas that are pretty hard to make fresh and interesting. Sitting firmly among those ideas are Mockumentaries and vampire stories. Mockumentaries have been experiencing quite a heyday since Spinal Tap and the Christopher Guest films came out. Now, it seems like half the movies seen are either mockumentaries or found footage films, […]

  Joel Merritt

Murray’s most recent starring role does not tread new territory, yet still manages to warm audience’s hearts along the way. Stories about a jerk with a heart of gold who bonds with young kids have been covered endlessly (Win Win, Up and Uncle Buck to name a few). That said, this one still manages to […]