{"id":3526,"date":"2018-02-01T02:06:00","date_gmt":"2018-02-01T07:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.pages.roanoke.edu\/?p=3526"},"modified":"2018-02-01T02:06:00","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T07:06:00","slug":"same-faces-new-places-years-newest-films-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/?p=3526","title":{"rendered":"Same Faces, New Places: Year&#8217;s Newest Films in Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Written by Joseph Carrick<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Coming into 2018, there has been a plethora of films released that have gained both noteworthy and not-so-wonderful reviews. Quite a few were released last month, and many of them were forgotten as soon as the film concluded, including the historical film of dubious accuracy: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Greatest Showman<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, the animated children\u2019s film <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ferdinand<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and the film franchise on its last legs: <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pitch Perfect 3<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Have you ever questioned how the most recognizable names in the circus industry (whatever\u2019s left of it) came to be? <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Greatest Showman <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">sufficiently answers all questions\u2013and more. Hugh Jackman portrays P.T. Barnum growing up in the rather unfortunate situation of being poor in 19<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">th<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> century America. Luckily, Barnum and his family are able to escape poverty due to a shady bank loan, a circus, and quite a few musical numbers. It was delightful to watch, even for those who would normally pass on this genre of film. The plotline of the story holds up nicely, and I, for one, recommend seeing it on the big screen before it\u2019s gone. Critics, however, are on the fence over the film. IMDb gave it an impressive 8\/10 and 95% of Google+ users claimed to like the film, but Rotten Tomatoes gave it a mere 53%. After viewing the film yourself, one might be inclined to see a Barnum and Bailey Circus in person. But they were shut down last year. On an unrelated note: the treatment of the animals involved with this circus deserves a film in their own right. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ferdinand<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2019s director, Carlos Saldanha might ring a bell to viewers interested in family animated movies. Over the years, Saldanha directed three <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ice Age<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> movies, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rio<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rio 2<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. For every decent movie this director has produced, at least four disastrous movies follow, making his record hardly squeaky-clean. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ferdinand<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is his most recent success, although it wouldn\u2019t be surprising if the name <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ferdinand <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">pops up again in the following years. For now, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ferdinand<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is a fun take on a classic story: a simple tale of morality with colorful animation. It has an interesting assortment of voice actors including John Cena and Kate McKinnon of SNL. Its Metascore is a solid 58 and has currently grossed about $200 million at the box office.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A film that was excitedly anticipated by millions has seemingly let down many viewers. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pitch Perfect 3<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was given a rating of 33% by Rotten Tomatoes and its box office result $174 million. While <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">PP2<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> made away with mediocre reviews, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">PP3<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> was, clearly, not nearly as lucky. Surprisingly enough, it can be rather difficult to be inventive with a plot as basic as \u201cpeople sing on a stage, but with comedic routines.\u201d The old cast goes through the motion of pretending to care about a plot we\u2019ve seen twice before. Thankfully this will be the last of the series, as the trilogy is riding on fumes by this point.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Joseph Carrick Coming into 2018, there has been a plethora of films released that have gained both noteworthy and not-so-wonderful reviews. Quite a few were released last month, and many of them were forgotten as soon as the film concluded, including the historical film of dubious accuracy: The Greatest Showman, the animated children\u2019s&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3527,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brackety-ack.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}