Ben Foster

ON THE SILVER SCREEN: LOST AT SEA (THE FINEST HOURS)

 

By Brian Lafferty

January 29, 2016 (San Diego) – Now that Hollywood has released all of its Oscar hopefuls, it’s time to sift through the leftovers. January is the month where you’ll be hard-pressed to find a decent movie. Even when you do, the chances are high that it’s not even worth a discounted ticket. It’s a truth that all film critics quickly learn.

The Finest Hours (Craig Gillespie, 2016) is bland and vanilla, made as if it was designed for a January dumping. Perhaps I’m being cynical, but this outlook may not be so unfounded when you see that Disney is the studio responsible for this movie. After all, Disney made, and continues to make, a box office killing with Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015), and could certainly afford to write this one off.


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ON THE SILVER SCREEN: SMUGGLING ACT

By Brian Lafferty

January 13, 2012 (San Diego) – Contraband is a goofy mess. It inspires laughter at the wrong moments and reticent admiration for its actors, who display a work ethic not unlike the horse in Animal Farm, but are deserving of a better film. Part of me wants to tell you to see it for its awfulness, but I can’t. Time and money are precious. Maybe it when it comes out on home video.

 


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Support community news in the public interest! As nonprofit news, we rely on donations from the public to fund our reporting -- not special interests. Please donate to sustain East County Magazine's local reporting and/or wildfire alerts at https://www.eastcountymedia.org/donate to help us keep people safe and informed across our region.