Oscar season is in full swing, but new releases at the theaters have slowed to a crawl. This is the way things usually happen during the early months of the year, of course; all of the award contenders are out, and the cycle of new flicks for the next year has yet to really begin.
But we're still watching movies, and we're still here to bring you reviews. Here's another round of bite-sized reviews, including Pixar's latest, De Niro's worst and more.
The Good Dinosaur
Last summer, Pixar released one of their best films ever with "Inside Out." And look, I'm not going to lie: that flick made me tear up. It was pitch perfect in dealing with the very real emotions of a young girl trying to figure things out amidst a ton of change in her life.
So Inside Out made me tear up a bit, but The Good Dinosaur? This one made me cry. Like, actually crying, tears running down my face, trying to hide so the other people in the theater couldn't see me. It's the story of a young dinosaur who is afraid of most everything in the world, trying to find his way back home to his family. He finds help in an unexpected place, and his journey home is filled with self-discovery and so very much emotion. I'm getting teary thinking about this again.
Go see it. It's an animated movie, but you won't see many other flicks that affect you the way this one does.
RATING: 9 out of 10
Dirty Grandpa
Congratulations, director Dan Mazer: you have successfully created the worst movie of Robert De Niro's entire career.
Seriously, this one is awful. De Niro stars as Dick, a perverted old grandpa who tricks his grandson (Zac Efron) into driving him to Daytona for spring break. The result is not funny at all. This was painful to sit through.
RATING: 1 out of 10
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
Whereas the previous review showed Robert De Niro at his worst, this flick showed director Michael Bay at his best. Bay is made fun of a lot (and rightly so), but this is the best movie of his career. It focuses on the infamous 2012 terrorist attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and allegedly tells the real story of the attacks and the Special Forces soldiers who try to figure out how to help. There's a lot of explosions, of course, because it's a Michael Bay movie, but this one tells a much more human story than you'd expect from the director of the horrible Transformers movies.
RATING: 6 out of 10
The Boy
I do not like scary movies. This movie was terrifying. It tells the tale of a young American nanny who takes a job working for a family in a small village in England. She soon discovers that the family has a life-sized doll that they treat as their real son. You can guess where things go from there. I hid my eyes a lot during this one, so my rating probably isn't perfect.
RATING: 4 out of 10
What do you think?