Mitt Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Though it’s chronicling years of recent Republican political history, Mitt is a mostly apolitical film, and certainly, the lessons one takes away from the film (which is available to stream on Netflix) have nothing to do with your choice of party. On a very basic level, it tries to humanize a man […]
Top 10 Philip Seymour Hoffman Performances
It’s with a heavy, heavy heart I get around to finishing this post I’ve started and restarted so many times. The problem with trying to name one’s favorite Philip Seymour Hoffman performances is that a rewatch of one of the dozens of films the man was great in can shake up the entire thing. He […]
Muscle Shoals Review
RATING: (4 STARS) “It’s like the songs come out of the mud.” That’s Bono, trying to explain how a small Alabama town of 8,000—the titular town of Greg ‘Freddy’ Camalier’s documentary—could produce some of the best, most soulful music in humankind’s history. Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, Etta James, Clarence Carter—not to mention rock acts like […]
10 Documentaries to Watch From Sundance 2014
Over at Sound on Sight, I wrote about the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and ten of the many promising documentaries that debuted there. Among them are Steve James’ Life Itself (about the late Roger Ebert), The Case Against 8 (about the legal fight against California’s infamous anti-gay-marragie initiative), and Mitt (about Romney’s six-year-long fight for […]
The 5 Best Leading Female Performances of 2013
Click here to check out my 5 favorite leading male performances of 2013. On to the leading ladies! One could plausibly argue 2013 was as strong a year at the top for leading women as it was for leading men, and one couldn’t plausibly argue that most other years. It was a great year for […]
The 5 Best Leading Male Performances of 2013
I have way too many fragments of a Best Performances of 2013 list to not write something up. The idea to break apart the list by, for lack of a better term, Oscar category was born out of the desire to highlight some stellar supporting work, which sometimes gets ignored when talking about the very […]
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
In my latest Essential Docs piece for Sound on Sight, I took a look at the making-of-Apocalypse-Now documentary Hearts of Darkness and the trouble with chasing absolute truth through one’s art. It’s a pretty fascinating film, made up almost exclusively of archival footage from Francis Ford Coppola’s wife Eleanor’s on-set video and audio diaries. Give […]
The Hunt Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Dane Thomas Vinterberg is a director who (rightfully) achieved a great deal of notoriety with his 1998 film The Celebration, which is in the books as the very first movie with the Dogme ’95 seal of approval. The Lars von Trier– and Vinterberg-led movement called upon filmmakers to shun special effects, extra […]
After Tiller Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) There are few topics—hell, there are few words—out there that engender as much debate and blind passion as abortion. But if we can’t have a reasoned, level-headed conversation about the subject, at least we now know such a film can be made about it. After Tiller is not a fire-breathing piece of […]
Final 2014 Oscar Nominations Predictions
No intro; this rundown is long enough. I’m really excited to see how things shake out tomorrow. Here are my best guesses. Best Picture American Hustle Captain Phillips Dallas Buyers Club Gravity Her Nebraska Saving Mr. Banks 12 Years a Slave The Wolf of Wall Street Hustle, Phillips, Gravity, Nebraska, 12 Years are your locks. […]
Man with a Movie Camera
I’ve begun writing a column for Sound on Sight called “Essential Docs.” It’s exactly what you think it is—a discussion of non-fiction movies, specifically the films that have endured as cultural and cinematic milestones years and decades later. My first piece discusses Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent documentary Man with a Movie Camera, which is magical […]
2014 Oscar Nominations Wish List
I say this every year, but it deserves repeating: quality has got nothing to do with the Oscars. Sure, the Academy is a large voting body, but each member has his or her own biases—just like film critics do—and for every member who thinks The Wolf of Wall Street is the best movie of 2013 […]
Metropolitan Review
RATING: (3 STARS) It takes a bold man to craft a film around a group of really snotty, spoiled teenage Manhattanites, but Whit Stillman did just that with 1990’s Metropolitan. He judges these characters without coming across as too judgmental, crafts them in a way that they deserve our scorn and sympathy simultaneously. It’s a […]
Saving Mr. Banks Review
RATING: (3 STARS) The most cynical viewers will no doubt find John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr. Banks unbearable. It’s narrative trajectory—stern woman’s icy exterior melts away—is hardly new territory, and the “Disneyfication” of the storyline makes this a film content to merely please, not challenge, its viewers. Mission accomplished, then. I found Saving Mr. Banks […]
Predicting the 2014 Golden Globes Winners
This Sunday, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will carve for itself a unique place in the 2013/2014 awards season. How do I know? Because it must. There still isn’t much consensus among this year’s major categories. The critics groups like 12 Years a Slave and Her. American Hustle and Gravity have loads of support—some from […]
Revisiting My Most Anticipated 2013 Movies
I was writing up my most anticipated movies of 2014 when I realized I couldn’t quite remember what topped (or even placed) on my 2013 list at this time last year. Revisiting the list, as I’ll do below, simply confirms my suspicions that this exercise is a little foolhardy. There’s no predicting what you’ll respond […]
