Author: Ian D.

What a year 2015 was at the movies. There was such an embarrassment of riches even if you were able to see every major release there is almost no way to shrink your favorite list to 10.

Many have called Director Alejandro González Iñárritu a visual sadist – and frankly it’s not difficult to make that argument. His cannon is filled with tough, bruising visions of the world that find his characters struggling for hope in the face of unrelenting cynicism.

Quentin has never been a stranger to controversy, in fact he often courts it. His visions force you to reckon with something – always through his very specific worldview and Eight is no different.

Imagine if you were sitting at the poker table and you knew your opponents hand. Even better, as the turn and the river hit the table your opponents hand looks increasingly better. But you know what’s coming and take every advantage to bait them into betting against you. That advantage seems too good to be true right? Well of course it is…you’d be pretty rich but poker would be really boring.

I’m going to go out on a limb and make an assumption – I don’t think a Moby Dick origin story is high on anyone’s list. Is Melville’s universe one that’s ripe to be expanded? Ron Howard seems to think the answer is an unequivocal yes – so we have In the Heart of the Sea – an aggressively old-fashioned tale of heroism and humanity on the high seas.