Grade D Archives - From | The | Balcony

Blair Witch (2016)

Bill Clark — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 17:27:30 +0000

Seventeen years ago the face of horror changed forever when The Blair Witch Project, filmed for a minuscule $60,000, took the August box office by storm and raked in an incredible $140 million by Halloween. It’s not like it was a fluke; all-around well-received, it was something never seen before… Continue reading

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Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

Bill Clark — Thu, 19 May 2016 17:30:58 +0000

2014’s Neighbors was a pleasant surprise. It was raunchy and edgy without ever being mean-spirited or unpleasant. Not an easy task for a movie-going public that continually wants to see the bar raised on how far comedies are willing to go. As popular as the film was, it seems highly… Continue reading

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How To Be Single (2016)

Bill Clark — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 13:46:59 +0000

Longtime readers of the site are familiar with how often it’s lamented that seemingly no one can get the romantic comedy right. There’s practically a ticker tape parade when someone does, and the most recent wait continues with the confused and sloppy How To Be Single. Billed as Valentine’s Day… Continue reading

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Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Bill Clark — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 15:32:47 +0000

Of all the troubling things about the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! – and there are plenty to choose from – the most problematic is that it’s barely a movie at all, but rather a serious of loosely stitched together sketches of wildly varying quality. Known for some of the most creative and… Continue reading

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Love the Coopers (2015)

Bill Clark — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 01:16:53 +0000

Love the Coopers features no fewer than six dog reaction shots. Has a successful comedy ever contained this distraction and desperate plea for a chuckle, “awww,” or both? It’s really just the beginning of the problems for this confused, temperamental, and mostly miserable film. Love the Coopers is as much a comedy… Continue reading

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Hot Pursuit (2015)

Bill Clark — Fri, 08 May 2015 13:19:55 +0000

Like most bad comedies, Hot Pursuit has a blooper reel attached to the end credits. Also like most bad comedies, the blooper reel contains more than the sum number of laughs preceding it. This is an alarmingly misguided effort, pairing two very different actresses – one of them good – in a… Continue reading

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 15:18:00 +0000

The law of diminishing returns strikes big-time in Avengers: Age of Ultron, an overstuffed mess of one-note characters, gaudy, incomprehensible CGI, and really, really bad one-liners. It’s so unexpected that you almost forget how fresh The Avengers was three short years ago, and what a welcome reprieve it was from the… Continue reading

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The Age of Adaline (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 23 Apr 2015 20:33:31 +0000

Talk about having time on your hands. The Age of Adaline tells the story of woman eternally stuck at age twenty-nine. This is the kind of “forever young” scenario we all dream about, but Lee Toland Krieger’s film is much more interested in soapy melodrama and period piece costuming than… Continue reading

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Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 05 Feb 2015 14:29:04 +0000

Jupiter Ascending takes the trailer approach to filmmaking, meaning each shot looks perfectly crafted for a two second appearance in a two-minute trailer. When tasked with creating a coherent film from said clips, the results are disastrous. This is one of the more misguided space operas of recent memory, and… Continue reading

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Blackhat (2015)

Bill Clark — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 18:30:14 +0000

The ongoing struggle to make cyber crime an exciting time at the movies continues with Michael Mann’s Blackhat, a ridiculous, stone-faced mish-mash of genre stereotypes and endless exposition. We’ve come to expect much more from Mann, an accomplished director whose Heat (1995) remains one of the première crime films ever… Continue reading

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