Ain’t Them Bodies Saints Review
RATING: (3 STARS) David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints has been compared to a Terrence Malick film for its lyrical tone, outlaw characters, persistent score, and painterly handheld cinematography. Such comparisons are understandable but a little unfair. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is more than a mere Malick rip-off. It’s a lovely yarn about learning to […]
Alexander Payne Movies
“Call Alexander Payne movies slight if you must, but the man has an uncanny knack for tackling the human condition with complexity and honesty, levity and sadness.” That’s how I opened my review of The Descendants almost two years ago to the day I’m writing this, and my opinion of Payne’s movies hasn’t changed a […]
Sunday Afternoon with Criterion: The Earrings of Madame de… Edition
I: Intro II: The Earrings of Madame de… III: What’s New? Intro Welcome to Sunday Afternoon with Criterion, a series of posts on JohnLikesMovies.com covering everything Criterion—the company’s newest releases, just-announced projects, reviews, lists, links, and more. In the midst of the bi-annunal Barnes and Noble Criterion sale comes a killer lineup announcement. February 2014—like […]
Dallas Buyers Club Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) “There ain’t nothing out there that can kill Ron Woodroof in 30 days.” —Ron Woodroof He was right. The Texas electrician lived with HIV and AIDS for the better part of seven years, from 1985 until his death in 1992. During those seven years, he founded a group that passed illegally trafficked […]
In a World… Review
RATING: (3 STARS) In a World… derives its title from the famous little uttered by Don “The Voice of God” LaFontaine hundreds and hundreds of times in movie trailers, commercials, etc. It takes place in the wake of LaFontaine’s death, and while the real man’s specter hangs over the entire film, it’s an entirely fictional—and […]
2014 Oscars: Don’t Forget About Us
Films released in the first two thirds of a given year are automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to possible Oscar nominations. There are exceptions, of course—Beasts of the Southern Wild, Midnight in Paris, Winter’s Bone, for example—but the nature of campaigning rewards those films that don’t have to remain in voters’ minds very […]
Short Term 12 Review
RATING: (4 STARS) There’s a moment in Short Term 12, about an hour in, that feels so wildly out of place it will take your breath away. It’s a scene out of any number of movies—a slasher flick, a gangster movie, the Jennifer Lopez vehicle Enough—but certainly not this tender-hearted drama about struggling teenagers and […]
Zack Snyder Movies
One of the easiest ways to elicit groans out of a cinephile is to bring up director Zack Snyder’s name in a non-pejorative way. The guy is synonymous with mindless action movies in a way that would make Michael Bay jealous. Zack Snyder movies are big, loud, and unapologetic. They’re poorly written masterpieces of visual […]
Enough Said Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Considering my only taste of writer/director Nicole Holofcener‘s cinema was the icy cold Please Give, it’s hard for me—even in its wake—to think of her as the heart and soul behind Enough Said. Maybe that’s because the true heart and soul of the film is the late James Gandolfini, who gives one […]
Sunday Afternoon with Criterion: The Grey Gardens Edition
I: Intro II: Grey Gardens III: What’s New? Intro Welcome to Sunday Afternoon with Criterion, a series of posts on JohnLikesMovies.com covering everything Criterion—the company’s newest releases, just-announced projects, reviews, lists, links, and more. It’s been a while since my last post in this series, but the deluge of doc screeners I’ve been going through […]
Running From Crazy Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Early on in Barbara Kopple‘s latest documentary, Running From Crazy, actress Mariel Hemingway takes the podium to speak at an event promoting suicide prevention. She acknowledges that she’s lost seven family members to suicide including, most famously, her grandfather Ernest. Before she gets to the seventh name, however, she pauses, and Kopple […]
Blackfish Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Blackfish does everything a good documentary should. It’s enlightening and thorough. It engages your emotions. And it follows the most important rule of journalism—show, don’t tell. Unlike a lot of cinematic non-fiction, Blackfish actually makes use of the medium. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite presents horrifying footage of the mistreatment of captive killer whales […]
Alex Gibney Movies
Directors like Woody Allen and Steven Soderbergh are rightfully praised for their seemingly innate ability to churn out films at such a rapid pace. But neither of these men have anything on documentarian Alex Gibney. Some will chide the fact that Gibney seems to perpetually have a film in theaters. This year, he brought us […]
What Else I’m Watching: October 2013
Because you can’t review them all. Sadly, life gets in the way of writing about everything I see, so this space is as much for keeping track of what I’m watching as it is for you to share your thoughts on what are, with any luck, a group of high-quality films. It’s been a hectic […]
Dirty Wars Review
RATING: (4 STARS) Dirty Wars is a devastating experience. It’s a film that chews up your hopeful, idealistic illusions regarding American leadership, spits them out, and leaves a cruise-missile-sized hole in your heart for good measure. Drone strikes and extra-covert military operations (including those that occur in nation-states we aren’t formally at war with) have […]
Wes Anderson Movies
Wes Anderson is one of the few directors whose name has become an acceptable adjective to describe his own movies. And there’s a good reason for that. Wes Anderson movies are stylistically and tonally identifiable in ways almost no other working director’s movies are. Wes Anderson movies have experienced a rejuvenation of sorts recently with […]
