REVIEW: Fences [2016]

“A fastball on the outside corner” It seems that many people have been docking points from Denzel Washington‘s latest directorial effort Fences by labeling it as “too theatrical.” Well, that’s somewhat hard to avoid when you’re dealing with August Wilson‘s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning play and its wall-to-wall dialogue touching upon love, responsibility, race, and politics on an emotionally resonate level beyond much of what Hollywood delivers “cinematically.” I’ve personally never held a stagey aesthetic against a film as long as the performances prop up the script’s location shortcomings…

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REVIEW: The Purge: Election Year [2016]

“Is murder our new religion?” The escalation of terror has dialed up a few more notches as writer/director James DeMonaco takes us further down the hole of first world genocide in The Purge: Election Year. What began behind fortified walls and a false sense of modest superiority to show how no one was safe when bloodlust, greed, and jealousy ruled mankind soon entered the outdoors to find the government blatantly enforcing its own thinly veiled mantra of “kill the poor” when the public stopped doing it for them. The only…

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