Ali Brings it On Home

Opening Act:

Welcome to Opening Act, a breakdown and analysis of the greatest opening scenes in film history. Today a look at the opening minutes of Michael Mann's 2001 biopic, Ali, starring Will Smith as the legendary Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Clay). Will Smith gives the performance of a lifetime, channeling The Greatest from his upset of Sonny Liston through his political activism and and Rumble in the Jungle against George Foreman. The opening third of the movie is an absolute masterpiece and the opening scene is a big reason why. Mann sets up his entire movie with a nearly nine minute montage set to a cover of Sam Cooke's "Bring it On Home to Me"

Netflix Original #12 - Death Note

Death Note

Director - Adam Wingard

Writers - Charles Parlapanides, Vlas Parlapanides and Jeremy Slater

Starring - Nat Wolff, Margaret Qually, LaKeith Stanfield, Shea Whigham, Willem Dafoe

Adam Wingard's Death Note is a fantasy-vigilante story, a teen drama mystery, a wacky horror comedy, a semi-generic detective crime thriller and a coming-of-age drama. Needless to say it isn't any good. We'll get to breaking down the individual elements but first it feels necessary to address the thing seemingly dominating conversation about this movie, the white-washing. Yes, this is an adaptation of a Japanese manga/anime series and it has been transported to Seattle and now stars the very generic looking white boy Nat Wolff. I'm not familiar at all with the original material and have no bone to pick in this fight but if Wingard had kept the story in Japan and cast a Japanese actor in the role of Light Turner, the only difference would have been a possibly competent leading performance. With an inept star, a confused script and mostly generic direction Death Note is the latest misfire from Netflix.

Remember This? xXx: Return of Xander Cage

xXx: Return of Xander Cage

Director - DJ Caruso

Writer - F Scott Frazier

Starring - Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen, Deepika Padukone, Ruby Rose, Kris Wu, Toni Collette

Surely you remember that Vin Diesel returned to the xXx franchise back in January, right? Xtreme Mountain Dew James Bond. Wait, did you completely forget xXx was even a thing in the first place? I guess you can be forgiven considering it has been 15 years since the original and nobody cares about the Ice Cube starring sequel. Ice Cube's mother doesn't remember that being a thing. Well anyways, Vin Diesel returns as Xander Cage, aka the coolest motherfucker who's ever lived, to fight terrorists or evil governments or something and he's brought a cast of friends that a cynical person would say are only there to boost the international box office. Sure Donnie Yen broke out to Western audiences with Rogue One but I'm willing to be nobody in North America had ever heard of Deepika Padukone or Kris Wu. Vin Diesel wants that Asian market.

Theatrical Experience - Ingrid Goes West

Ingrid Goes West

Director - Matt Spicer

Writers - David Branson Smith and Matt Spicer

Starring - Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, Wyatt Russell, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Billy Magnussen

According to Wikipedia, Instagram is a photo-sharing application that has over 700 million registered users that have uploaded over 40 billion photos. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential social networks in the world." I guess that makes it a real thing and not something made up for this movie as a sort of pseudo-Black Mirror satire about people and their phones. Never would have guessed that.

Remember This? The Bye Bye Man

The Bye Bye Man

Director - Stacy Title

Writer - Jonathan Penner

Starring - Douglas Smith, Lucien Laviscount, Creddisa Bonas, Carrie-Anne Moss, Doug Jones, Faye Dunaway

Remember This? is a new feature meant to highlight films that got big releases and then quickly vanished from our collective consciousnesses. In most cases, all involved are probably happy for this but I feel like their shame should be preserved. A rough guide for films appearing in this column is a film must have received a wide release in at least 2000 theatres according to BoxOfficeMojo and have been released during the last calendar year. Bonus points will be awards to franchise movies that get quickly abandoned because of their higher level of difficulty. The Bye Bye Man, a PG-13 horror film dumped into theatres in January was quite obviously destined for complete dismissal by the public but it is warranted? Yes. After watching it I can definitively say nobody else should ever watch this movie.

Opening Act: Seven Days in May

With everything going on down south in the good old United States of America I figured it would be fitting to escape current events with a lighthearted romp of a movie about an attempted military coup to overthrow the president. John Frankenheimer's 1964 classic political thriller is written by Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) and stars Fredrich March as President Lyman, signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Burt Lancaster is General Scott, a military man who doesn't see this as a diplomatic solution to the Cold War but a ploy by the Russians to gain an unbeatable advantage. Kirk Douglas is Colonel Casey, the man caught between the two and Ava Gardner is Scott's former mistress who provides vital evidence of the coup to the President and his loyalists. See how much nicer this fictional White House is than Trump's.

Titillating Tease: or the 10 Best Things About The Death of Stalin Trailer

I had such a good time making fun of the trailer for Charlie Sheen's 9/11 that I wanted to do it again. Sadly they just don't make movies that bad every day so you're going to have to settle for adoration and excitement instead because The Death of Stalin looks fucking great. It comes from the mind of Armando Iannucci, the creator of Veep, The Thick of It and In the Loop. He might be the best political satirist working in film today and he assembled a great cast to tackle the political turmoil that happens in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin. Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi, Michael Palin, Paddy Considine, Andrea Riseborough and more so without further ado here's the 10 best things about The Death of Stalin.

Opening Act - Boogie Nights

Welcome to Opening Act, a new feature in which I analyze the first scene of a movie. I hope to do this on a weekly basis and may even transition this to a video review series if I ever decide to learn how to do that. If anybody wants to teach me, feel free to try.

The first movie I have chosen for this column is Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 odyssey through the pornographic film industry of the late 70s and into the new era of home video of the 80s through the rise and fall of porn star Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg). In addition to Dirk, Boogie Nigthts chronicles influential director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), his wife and porn star Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), Dirk's best friend and fellow actor Reed Rothchild (John C Reilly), cowboy-loving porn actor with a passion for stereo sales Buck Swope (Don Cheadle) and the young female pornstar Rollergirl (Heather Graham) among many others. Now I haven't seen Paul Thomas Anderson's debut feature, Hard Eight, so I cannot speak to it's quality but Boogie Nights is his breakout film, making him a marquee director among film lovers.

Netflix Original #11 - Win It All

Win It All

Director - Joe Swanberg

Writers - Joe Swanberg and Jake Johnson

Starring - Jake Johnson, Aislinn Derbez, Joe Lo Truglio, Keegan-Michael Key

Win It All follows several months in the life of gambling addict Eddie Garrett (Johnson) from prolific mumblecore director Joe Swanberg. This is almost certainly the most conventional movie of Swanberg's career, retaining very little from his microbudget largely improvisational films. Win It All fits comfortably in with the more dramatic "Sundance Indies" eschewing the artificial quirks of it's contemporaries in favour of streamlined character development and storytelling.