Modern animated films offer unlimited opportunity for imagination to run wild, and when they are really, really well done they often become blockbusters. Big Hero 6 deserves to be a blockbuster; it is a marvelous movie that revels in the […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) ☆ ☆
Anyone who regularly reads my reviews knows that I often bemoan the state of modern film comedy, which so often now wallows in vulgarity and raunchiness instead of actually trying to be legitimately, intelligently funny. Read my review of We’re […]
Continue reading »The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 (2014) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
I was, and continue to be, disturbed by the premise of the first Hunger Games movie (I’ve not read the books) in which teenagers and children are forced to hunt and kill other teenagers and children as a form of futuristic […]
Continue reading »Birdman (2014) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Perhaps the most revelatory film I’ve seen all year is Alejandro Gonzáles Iñárritu’s Birdman, Or, the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance. From the very beginning, this is a virtuoso display of camerawork, editing, acting and directing. It is structured as if […]
Continue reading »Whiplash (2014) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
One of the most acclaimed movies of 2014 (so far) is Whiplash, a drama starring Miles Teller as a first-year student at a music conservatory, whose drumming attracts the notice of the conservatory’s most respected — and feared — instructor, […]
Continue reading »Interstellar (2014) ☆ ☆ 1/2
I confess that I had huge expectations for this movie. Not because director Christopher Nolan is the darling of comic fans for his “Dark Knight” trilogy, but because it seemed to mark a return to hard science-fiction: the prime importance […]
Continue reading »Gone Girl (2014) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Gone Girl is a complex character-driven mystery in which a woman disappears and her husband is eventually arrested for her murder. But in this riveting tale from David Fincher — with a screenplay written by the original author, Gillian Flynn –secrets […]
Continue reading »Nightcrawler (2014) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler is a kind of social vampire scenario. It deftly threads one sociopath’s blossoming into a social tapestry into which that character is particularly well suited. As much as the film is about Louis Bloom, it is also about […]
Continue reading »Before I Go to Sleep (2014) ☆ ☆
Thrillers are supposed to thrill. That is not the case with Rowan Joffe’s new movie Before I Go to Sleep, which is based on a book by S. J. Watson. The plot blends elements of Memento and 50 First Dates, attempting […]
Continue reading »The Judge (2014) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Actors are supposed to draw upon their own experiences while pretending to be someone else on stage or on screen. This reinforces a script’s sincerity and verisimilitude, if the performer can plumb the depths of his or her own past […]
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