Best and Worst of 2023

2023… It has been a difficult year for me personally, and I welcomed the increase in cinema this year since the pandemic as it was a means of escapism and distraction. But it has also been a difficult year for cinema! The start of the year (in the lead up to award season) saw several…

Banter: An Ode to Cinema?

We had a run of movies-about-movies lately: Damien Chazelle’s heady Babylon, Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, and Sam Mendes’ Empire of Light. Of course, these aren’t the first and they won’t be the last pieces of celluloid (metaphorical or otherwise) to address the nature of film itself. The Artist, Son of Rambow, Ed Wood, Hail, Caesar!,…

The MCU 30 Ranked (Phases 1 – 4)

People do enjoy a good list, and what’s better to list than every single Marvel Cinematic Universe movie? They certainly are churning them out now, without signs of stopping any time soon. So this list is Phase 1 through Phase 4.Please be aware that many of these films I have only watched once, and I…

Banter: The MCU 22 – Ranked

Everyone is giving a final rating of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as they stand after the events of Avengers: Endgame. Which is a fair assessment to make; there was a definite end to the MCU as we know it, and a total shift of personalities and motivations lie ahead of the franchise now. Admittedly,…

Best and Worst of 2018

Even before this year began, I had my doubts about the film line up. There were a lot of franchises I didn’t care about, a lot of unknowns, and a lot of straight up bad films. This year has been quite intense for me personally also, which didn’t make things any easier for Cinema Cocoa….

Review: Birdman (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

A film loved by critics and one can see why, but Birdman also had my attention immediately. Unique and darkly humorous, Michael Keaton at his very best. Riggan Thomson is a washed out, down on his luck actor who once had Hollywood fame as the superhero Birdman. Hoping to reignite his life’s significance he writes, directs…

Banter: “Bayformers”

Speaking as a fan, as someone who will defend Michael Bay’s Transformer films (or the Bayformers, as they are called without affection) I will say right now: There’s a myriad of awfulness scattered throughout the franchise. There are scenes that are so bad that I still cringe and feel my childhood withering under their vast…