For us here at GOO Reviews, the year 2019 started out like any other — bleak, weary, depressed, and with the kind of ominous foreboding that the very idea of improvement of any kind seemed an absolute impossibility — but… it ended with a bit of a whimper.  In that we didn’t write many reviews in the last half of the year.  Like almost none at all. Continue reading →

2018 was not a good year.  For the world.  So another bad year then.  Again.

2018 is the year that James Gunn got fired for all the wrong reasons.  2018 is the year that Daredevil got cancelled.  It’s the year that the Saga comicbook went on hiatus, that the Tide Pod Challenge got into gear, that Kanye kept saying things, that normal people learned who Logan Paul is.  2018 is the year that Anthony Bourdain died.  2018 is the year that Aretha Franklin died.  2018 is the year that f*cking Stan Lee died.  2018 is another year where Trump remained in office, which, in some very literal cases, meant that some people died that under normal circumstances, probably wouldn’t have (to say nothing of ‘shouldn’t have’), and while none of us want this blog about movies from an Edmonton perspective to get political, it’s impossible to ignore that a world with Donald Trump as President of the United States is the kind of thing that leaves none of us untouched, and as long as it stays this way there are going to be a lot of things that will keep going wrong in the worst, most evil and selfish and thoughtless and yet stupidest and laziest ways possible.  And for us here at GOO Reviews, that meant 2018 was a year that kind of got away from us in terms of reviews coverage.  For that we apologize, though it’s an apology accompanied with no guarantee that things, on that front, will get better. Continue reading →

2017 was not a good year.  For the world.  And you know why.

It was an okay year for movies though.

The year 2017 brought us five new and very different superhero movies (seven if you count LEGO Batman and Power Rangers), a new mainline Star Wars movie that’s good partially because it’s divisive, some really great, deeply emotional indie movies, and… well, that’s the kind of stuff we get every year actually.  For all of us sweaty nerds, we are truly living in a wonderland of delights, with movies about ideas and concepts we never thought we’d see on screen.  And for you those of you out there bemoaning the current state of the movie industry, you’re not wrong, at least not totally, but you are being willfully blind and dismissive.  There are still plenty of great, introspective, emotionally resonant movies out there, and, believe it or not, some of those movies are about superheroes. Continue reading →

Look, we know you have a lot of places to go to get your “Top 10 Lists” on. Hell, there are entire publishing industries built on them. But we’re glad you’re here anyway, however many or few of you there may be, to share in our year at the movies.

To be clear, what follows is only the movies we, after roundtable discussion and voting, liked best. We’re not claiming these are the best, there are probably at least a few 2016 movies that are technically better, and there are certainly many that are more acclaimed. You might even hate some of the movies in our Top 10. That’s great! That means you care! This is just what we liked, the 10 movies we liked best this year, the ones that gave us the highest highs and the lowest lows, the ones that made us feel and meant the most to us — the brightests of the bunch. Continue reading →