Backcountry is a well-acted film with a familiar premis
Foxcatcher chronicles the tragic partnership of multi-m
Hell hath no fury like a fairy whose wings have been
From feds to family to crooks and politicians, everyone has and angle – or three — in American Hustle, David O. Russell’s new film that offers a look at the post-Watergate schizophrenic culture of America. No more is this exemplified than in the opening scene that offers Irving Rosenfeld’s (Christian Bale in a role physically antithetical to […]
Simultaneously melancholic and beautiful, Nebraska explores the dangers of trust.
The first five minutes of Lone Survivor feels like an advertisement for the Navy. The film opens with the training of Navy SEALS. With each one that rings the bell three times and quits, another perseveres and harnesses their freezing, shaking, breaking down bodies into an unconscious aggression. Peter Berg brings his familiar Friday Night Lights style […]
Desolation of Smaug will become the most memorable chapter, but this doesn’t make it any more substantial than the first.
“It’s new and it never gets old,” Llewyn Davis tells the audience twice in the Coen brothers’ emotionaly powerful new film, Inside Llewyn Davis. Set in 1961 Greenwhich Village, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, a nomadic folk singer who must routinely way his need for money against his refusal to abandon […]
Enough Said honestly depicts the evolution of marriage, divorce, and the aftermath.
Paul Walker’s role in Hours is a departure from the most familiar Brian O’Conner that occupies the various Fast-speckled franchise. As Nolan Hayes, he is asked to find a deeper emotional peril as a husband who has recently lost his wife and a father who is on the verge of losing his prematurely-born daughter in the wake […]
First and foremost, Blackfish, the 2013 documentary from Gabriela Cowperthwaite, makes me regret visiting Sea World when I was nine years old. More importantly as a documentary, Blackfish exposes a large tourist attraction as little more than a shady zoo for aquatic life and humans alike. Orca whales are the main attraction in both the documentary Sea World. In particular, […]
For a bit, Saving Mr. Banks offers a look at artistic integrity in battle with the Hollywood machine. Around 1961, P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), author of the beloved Mary Poppins, begins to see her income dwindle. The books have stopped selling, she has not written another installment, and the royalties have ceased. Here, she is faced with […]
As he does in Shame and Hunger, Steve McQueen pulls no punches in 12 Years a Slave, which is one of the reasons it is the most important movie to see this year. Based Solomon Northup’s autobiography of the same name, McQueen’s film goes beyond relaying horrific nature of slavery and the dangers of righteousness – though […]
