Category Archives: PC Thugs

Five Great Brie Larson Performances

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Brie Larson has spent a lot of time in film, television, and music making many appearances on television shows, sitcoms, dramas, and even working with Disney every now and then. She’s also a very prominent musician and has managed to finally break out in Hollywood over the last seven years as a surefire heavy hitter. Working her way from supporting player in to headlining acclaimed award winning films, Brie Larson has earned her stripes as a bonafide dramatic actress who is now an Oscar contender.

We’re rooting for her to take the gold home come February, but even if she doesn’t win, she has so many more amazing performances up her sleeve, and her potential for future wins are limitless. Being able to make the transition from art house films to mainstream cinema easily, Larson is something of a chameleon prone to stealing scenes, and I’m glad she’s finally getting her credit.

Here are five of her best performances yet.

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Our Top 10 Minority Movie Heroes Part II

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I had a good time compiling a list of some of the best and most entertaining minority movie heroes, so I thought it’d only be fitting to offer up a sequel to the list with ten more movie minority movie heroes. I had a lot more suggestions this time thanks to the help of some friends, but narrowed them all down to these ten interesting and magnetic heroes of film. Did I miss any characters that you feel should have been included? Let us know!

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Facing Down the Bullies: “Angus” and “My Bodyguard”

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There’s been a lot of talk about movie anniversaries this year, but two of the movies that have been left out of the discussion are two of my childhood favorites. There’s the 1995 teen drama “Angus,” and the 1980 “My Bodyguard.” Oddly enough, both films deal with the idea of coming of age, surviving high school, and learning to deal with a specific kind of bully. Both films also confront the idea that sometimes staring down the bullies is a right of passage we all must confront at one time or another. And yet, both films have been off the radar for a very long time.

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Twenty Years Later, “Toy Story” Still Works As the Beginning of a Saga

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I was lucky enough to be one of the folks that went to see “Toy Story” in theaters back in 1995 when Pixar premiered their newest animated adventure. It was an amazing experience then, and it is still one of the best movie going experiences of my life. Back then, the very notion of a motion picture completely computer animated was absurd and made people gasp in shock, even when Pixar boasted about creating a large realistic world. Just producing Homer Simpson in computer animation for a segment of “The Simpsons” cost a lot of money and took immense man hours, just think of a movie based around the medium. “Toy Story” is gladly not a film you’d expect to be computer animated since Pixar takes great pains to unfold a world that’s charming, magical, and grounded in enough reality to enjoy.

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“Home Alone” and Its Endearing Adventure

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I was seven when “Home Alone” first arrived in theaters, and oddly enough I don’t remember the first time watching it. I did go to the movies to see it, as we always did, but I do fondly remember one night when my brother and I dragged my dad to see it for a third time. Beside “Who Framed Roger Rabbit!” we’d seen “Home Alone” at least three times in theaters, and we loved it. My dad had worked late, and he picked my brother and me up during one snowy night and we debated on what to see in the theaters. He was anxious to watch “King Ralph,” but we begged him to let us watch “Home Alone” once again. He obliged and allowed us to watch it yet again, despite entering the theater mid-way through the movie for the final half.

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Five Reasons “Saving Christmas” is the Best Movie in the History of the World

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Believe the hype. “Saving Christmas” is one of the most bafflingly awful movies ever made. And while I can kind of see the distorted logic behind making this kind of movie, nothing about it makes any kind of sense. Every time you think the movie almost understands where it’s heading, it just completely flies off the rails and injects some truly remarkable moments of lunacy. Star and producer Kirk Cameron is so sure that his movie will finally convince people that Christmas is Christian and only Christian that he begins the movie with a monologue about his agenda for the movie. There are only about five characters in the movie, including one really creepy Santa, and they’re all portrayed by a truly horrific cast of performers.

“Saving Christmas” is much too certain about itself to be considered satire, and often much too campy to be taken seriously. Kirk looks dead certain he knows more than anyone about religion and Christmas, and doesn’t mind flaunting it throughout the film, but then he literally ends the movie on our cast break dancing during a Christmas party. In a slow motion montage. Again, I’m almost certain it’s meant to be taken with a tongue in cheek, but I’d wager Cameron intended the climax to be taken seriously, much like the message behind “Saving Christmas.” The movie is much too baffling and surreal to trash it completely, so I just couldn’t help but itemize five observations about this oddity.

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Celebrating Neil Marshall’s “The Descent”

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I don’t consider it a far off notion to call Neil Marshall this generation’s John Carpenter. The man has delivered his own twisted and original visions of various genres that have ended in some of the most riveting movie experiences I’ve ever had. I first discovered Marshall with “Dog Soldiers,” which successfully combines the werewolf sub-genre with a war movie, resulting in a quite obvious homage to “Assault on Precinct 13.” I’m also a humongous fan of his post apocalyptic tale “Doomsday,” which is his loving ode to the post apocalypse sub-genre and zeroing in on a heroine that’s basically Snake Plissken, even missing one eye, to boot.

Marshall at his best is a raw and relentlessly brilliant filmmaker who can muster up some unique emotions and arouse hot debates among the horror and science fiction community. Marshall’s masterpiece is his odd form of “The Thing,” in where he casts a predominantly female cast, all of whom are confined to one location, forced to fight off delirium, and mistrust, and becoming victim to their landscape, which is harrowing and dangerous no matter where one turns.

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