Nebraska Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Nebraska is Alexander Payne‘s most prickly movie since Election. Thematically, it more closely resembles his later, more humanist films—The Descendants, Sideways. But there’s an edge (a dull edge, but an edge nonetheless) that holds the viewer at arm’s length—until it relents and you give it a warm embrace. It took me a […]
Frozen Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) What’s this? An animated musical with genuinely great music? It’s true. There’s a lot that’s great about Disney’s Frozen—its breathtaking animation, its plucky characters, its old-fashioned sensibility—but what I’m most heartened by is the notion that movies like this can feature some fantastic tunes. As much as Disney’s been on a roll […]
All Is Lost Review
RATING: (3 STARS) J.C. Chandor, as writer and director, might have his name all over All Is Lost, but make no mistake: this is Robert Redford‘s movie. With no one to play off of (or even speak to), he needs to shepherd us along a harrowing journey without any explicit reason to care about him […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Call Me Kuchu Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) There’s courage, and then there’s what the men and women at the center of Call Me Kuchu display. This exceptional documentary, from directors Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall, chronicles the fight for LGBT rights in Uganda where homosexuality is illegal and almost became a capital offense. For these individuals, among them […]
Escape From Tomorrow Review
RATING: (0.5 STARS) The more horrifying thing about Randy Moore’s Escape From Tomorrow—a David Lynch-inspired nightmare of a movie filmed covertly at Disney World—is how hypocritical its message feels. By setting such a disturbing movie at the “Happiest Place on Earth,” Moore pretty clearly wants to say some things about Disney’s dirtier side—the side that […]
Captain Phillips Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Movie magic happens when the right actor finds the right director. Jimmy Stewart was the perfect everyman to navigate the twisted worlds of Alfred Hitchcock’s thrillers. In Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese found the ideal actor to bring his tough Italian leading men to the big screen. The list goes on and […]
Iron Man 3 Review
RATING: (3 STARS) Whatever Marvel movie followed The Avengers was going to struggle to overcome the scaling back that, in this franchise’s very particular case, was unavoidable. Marvel movies, for better or worse, never take place in a vacuum, and for four years and five films, this studio was building toward something massive and unprecedented. […]
Gravity Review
RATING: (4 STARS) “I hate space.” That quote represents a brief moment of levity in Gravity, an otherwise harrowing thriller, and it perfectly sums up its lead character, rookie spacewalker Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock). The film itself—or at least the stakes from which every bit of tension is derived—is better summarized by a quote […]
