The Double (2014) Review
RATING: (2 STARS) Director Richard Ayoade’s The Double finds visual beauty in some objectively ugly places. The entire movie is bathed in harsh, obnoxious light, and a dusty, dirty film—”a patina of shit,” to quote the movie Michael Clayton—engulfs its characters, which supports the film’s themes that the working world is a suffocating, miserable place. […]
Nymphomaniac: Volume II Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) In Volume I of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, sex was used as a means of discovery and toy for manipulation. In Volume II, it’s a goddamn weapon of mass destruction. What’s arguably even more shocking than this film’s depravity and bleakness—or its copious and explicit sexual content—is von Trier’s willingness and ability […]
Blood Ties Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Though the film that couldn’t be more representative of a specific place (New York City) and time (the 1970s), Guillaume Canet’s Blood Ties deals with themes that are timeless. An intense sibling rivalry, one between a cop and criminal, takes center stage, but there’s more—arguably too much—going on in this story co-written […]
Nymphomaniac: Volume I Review
RATING: (2.5 STARS) Volume I of famous Danish provocateur Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac saga is…well…incomplete. This portrait of a woman’s journey into sex addiction builds and builds and builds, and if Volume II delivers on the promise introduced here, these two drifting hours of character development will feel essential. On their own, they just don’t. […]
Kids for Cash Review
RATING: (3 STARS) For the uninitiated, the “Kids for Cash” judicial scandal took place over a period of about ten years, from the late 1990s to the late 2000s. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania (one county over from where this reviewer grew up, incidentally), Judge Mark Ciavarella ruled over the juvenile court system with an iron […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Inside Llewyn Davis Review
RATING: (4 STARS) I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say Inside Llewyn Davis is the Coen Brothers‘s most emotional movie. After a half-decade turning out great film after great film every 12 months or so, Joel and Ethan take a couple years and come back with something that’s as enigmatic as Barton Fink, as […]
American Hustle Review
RATING: (3.5 STARS) Of many great pleasures found in David O. Russell’s latest, American Hustle, the greatest is watching not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE talented actors give truly exceptional performances. Jeremy Renner is the only Russell newcomer, as the Silver Linings Playbook and The Fighter helmer has brought together an […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
