November 7th, 2016
As we recently reported, Finding Dory reached $1 billion this year, becoming the third film released in 2016 to reach that milestone. Is it as good as its box office numbers would indicate? Well, it is from Pixar, so the chances of that are excellent.
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September 19th, 2016
The seventh season of Modern Family had the lowest ratings since the first season. It was also the worst season in terms of major awards. Has the show jumped the shark? Or is it still a great sitcom, even if it is no longer the best sitcom on TV?
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September 28th, 2015
Modern Family has been one of the best and most popular sitcoms on TV for each of its five previous seasons. In fact, it has won five Outstanding Comedy Series Emmys in a row, tying the record. Is it still the best sitcom on TV? And how are the extras on the DVD?
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December 16th, 2014
The Skeleton Twins is the fifth film I reviewed this week and it is the only one that earned impressive reviews. This does raise expectations, but is that a mistake? Or does this film truly deserve the critical praise it has received?
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November 7th, 2014
Another late review, but there are special circumstances here. Fox has gone with a digital delivery system for their screeners, which means I have to stream the movie or TV show. Here's the problem with that. At any given time, I'm working on two or three projects for work and Firefox tends to quickly suck up a lot of resources, which cause me to restart the browser rather frequently to free up the RAM. (It's not uncommon for Firefox to be using more than 2 gigs of RAM at a time.) This is fine when all I'm doing is reading box office data or cast lists. But it makes it nearly impossible to stream something. Oh if only I had a separate machine I could use to watch movies. ... Oh that's right, it's called a Blu-ray player and I have one right under my computer desk. Anyhow, so after trying and failing to get the streaming to work, I just decided to buy a few of the screeners for movies and TV shows that I previously signed up to receive a physical copy. Of course, I only did this for films and TV shows I thought were going to be good, because it's my money. The first to arrive was Mr. Peabody & Sherman. I loved the original cartoons, but was the adaptation into a feature-length movie a success? Or do these characters work better in a five-minute format?
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August 7th, 2014
The Muppets was the first Muppet movie in more than a decade, but it was a big hit with critics and did very well in theaters for a live action family film. A sequel was inevitable, but as the opening song of Muppets Most Wanted, the sequel is rarely as good as the original. Is this the case here? Is it one of the rare exceptions? If not, is it still good enough to check out?
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March 1st, 2014
2014 continued its strong run in February with The Lego Movie beating even the high end expectations and will become the first film released in 2014 to reach $200 million. March doesn't look as strong, as no film is on track to hit $200 million, but there are five films that have a chance at $100 million. Granted, not all of them will get there; in fact, there's a chance only one of them will get there. Divergent is the film I think has the best shot at the century club, but it could be joined by Mr. Peabody and Sherman, for instance, which is earning surprisingly strong reviews. Noah is a big-budget Bible epic and the studio has to be hoping for at least $100 million, but the buzz is quite negative and there have been reports of troubles behind-the-scenes. Last March was led by Oz The Great and Powerful, which pulled in more than $200 million domestically. I don't think any film opening this March will match that figure. In addition, The Croods and G.I. Joe: Retaliation also hit the $100 million milestone, while Olympus Has Fallen came very close. Granted, there were also some big bombs last March, like The Host, but even so, I think 2014 will lose ground in the year-over-year comparison.
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October 12th, 2013
Recently, Modern Family won its fourth Outstanding Comedy Series at the Prime Time Emmys. This puts it just one behind Frasier for the all-time lead in that category. It has three Emmys for Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, putting it one behind M*A*S*H* in that category. It "only" has two nominations for Emmys for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, but it won both times. It has also earned nearly two dozen nominations for various acting categories, including five wins. It is easily the most acclaimed comedy series on TV at the moment, and despite being on the air for just four season so far, it is one of the most acclaimed comedy series of all time. This creates incredibly high expectations. Is it possible to live up to these expectations? Or will the show start to disappoint?
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