Michael DeNobile's Movie Reviews

It's been over two years since Michael DeNobile’s last movie reflection. He apologizes for being away so long. This isn't an excuse but an explanation: life happened and then the pandemic (which you would have thought would have given him more time but it actually didn't). However, he is back and is going to do a COVID series of many of the things he binged while in quarantine. But let's come back with a bang... A REFLECTION OF (WHAT WILL HOPEFULLY BE SEASON 1 OF) DISNEY+'S BIG SHOT Michael DeNobile provides a reflection of season one of Disney’s new series, Big Shot. Sacrifice. If there's anything the last year has taught us, it's what we have and are willing to sacrifice. It has also put life into perspective. Survival. Both literally and metaphorically, the last year has also taught us about survival, as human beings, as families, as communities, as a society. Strength. It's more than just a Kelly Clarkson lyric, what doesn't kill you truly does m...

Originally published May 2016. A REFLECTION OF THE MOVIE BEFORE WE GO (2014) Here's a bit of free existential advice: life is complicated. We are often caught between trains at the station, missing one and thinking that that was the mistake. But the mistake was thinking that thought to begin with. One decision, one night can change the course of history, whether it is big history like the story of America or small history, like you missing that train. Things happen for a reason; it's wisdom to just swim through it and let it happen. Fall in love more than once. The first time will teach you what kind of person you really are. The second time will let you know it is possible to love again. Never regret a broken heart; only regret if you run away from it. When all else fails, check yourself into a hotel room to find a warm, safe place to put things into perspective. Fill out the review with full-throated honesty, but leave the "Are you likely to return?" lin...

Originally published in May 2016. A REFLECTION OF THE MOVIE LISTEN TO YOUR HEART (2010) Music is one of the most powerful forces on earth, aside from love. I remember in an old encyclopedia I had when I was a kid, the entry for music was so awesome because the words were printed in the shape of a heart, each line curling upon itself, describing the emotions circulating within the words and instruments of different compositions of melody and lyrics. Music is a strange things; it's physical as sound and yet it's more than that. It's ethereal; it's spiritual, and I don't necessarily mean in a religious sense. It existentially connects the human spirit in its craft, shifting our moods, defining our identities, healing us in times of great crisis, and uplifting us in moments of triumph, glory and joy. New Wave British band Squeeze, infamous for "Tempted (by the Fruit of Another)" and "Pulling Mussels (from a Shell)," sang in "If I D...

Originally published in May 2016. A REFLECTION ON THE MOVIE STUCK IN LOVE (2012) "I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark." ~Raymond Carver, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Writing is something I love. It is a thing of beauty, and in the verisimilitude, an opportunity to represent life as art. Writers draw on what they know, creating pictures with the emotions on their palette, exhuming from deep within the darkest parts of their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their joys, their most painful sorrows. Writers see trees where others see forests, thinking and overthinking moments, ready to squeeze--nay, suck--the marrow out of life. It is in this art, this verisimilitude, this fiction that reality can truly become alive, where nations rise and fall, hearts shatter and mend, dreams defer and are realized. And in this hu...

Originally published in December 2016. Movie seen at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY. A REFLECTION ON THE MOVIE COLLATERAL BEAUTY Film enthusiast Michael DeNobile discusses 2016 film Collateral Beauty and its themes of Love, Time, and Death. Love. Time. Death. Ultimately, these three are everyone's hauntings as we shuffle through this mortal coil, a coil as fragile as dominoes: taking a painful amount of Time and Love--risking even Death--that by a mere act of the smallest bit of kinetic energy, and they all fall down, breaking and shattering on the ground. But when they do all fall down, as they always do, how exactly do we find our way back? Michael DeNobile asks audiences, is it even finding our way back to the path or merely finding a way back to some path or another? In any case, in terms of Love, Time and Death, we seem to always settle for denial. We hide behind our excuses, addictions, lies that become truths, and blame everyone else but ourselves, enslaving our very s...

Originally published in December 2016. Movie seen at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY. A REFLECTION ON THE MOVIE PASSENGERS Michael DeNobile discusses themes presented in the 2016 sci-fi/romance Passengers, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.” ~Stephen Crane We are but specks of dust raging through space on a blue and green ball of chaos. We demand so much of the universe as we waste time through our day to day living. We expect to be thanked for the little we do for others. We expect others to present us with titles and awards attesting to this self-avowed greatness. We expect acknowledgement from the cosmos and dare God Himself to bow down before us as we struggle to be sinking ships adrift on a sea of stardust. And then some of us wake up too soon. We are forced to rise above the mundane and realize our insignificance, to stand on the...

Originally posted November 2017. A REFLECTION ON THE FILM A MONSTER CALLS When life gets too real, where can we summon the courage to face these realities? When we cannot reconcile how there can be paradoxical truths in this life, from where can we find the knowledge and wisdom of this world to solve these conundrums? When death robs the color of our worlds, when people rob us of our dignity, when our halos are broken and our wings folded, where can we learn to fly once again? Monsters exist in reality. Their mission is to steal us of our sanity, our peace, and our happiness. And there is only one way to compete with these real monsters, and that is to call upon imagined monsters to sojourn with us, to walk beside us, that in our imaginations we may find what is necessary to summon the courage to face reality, to call ourselves to action and to speak the truth: that we have the dignity that others deny us, that we are sometimes our worst enemies, that we don't kn...