Alexander Payne is becoming mid-America’s version of Woody Allen, making small-scale, personal movies in unique, interesting ways. His feature films Election (1999), About Schmidt (2002), Sideways (2004) and The Descendants (2011) feature quirky characters in realistic situations taken to absurd limits, enacted by wonderful […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
August: Osage County (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Adapting plays for the big screen is a tricky business, especially when a playwright takes on the task him or her self. Sometimes they come across as artificial or very cramped or stagy in some respect. When done right, however, […]
Continue reading »American Hustle (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
Some movies are essentially indescribable, at least in terms of genre, type or even effect. Such is the case with American Hustle, David O. Russell’s new exploration of the 1970s. On the surface it is a very loose interpretation of […]
Continue reading »Saving Mr. Banks (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
Who knew there was so much turmoil behind the story of Mary Poppins? In 1964 the public was presented with a jolly holiday of a movie replete with joyful music, peppy characters and a serious but sweet undertone. It won […]
Continue reading »Out of the Furnace (2013) ☆ ☆
Director and co-writer Scott Cooper has made what could have been a really good, provocative revenge thriller; at least, that’s what the preview promised. Sadly, the result is a slow, muddled thriller without any thrills. Two brothers (Christian Bale, Casey […]
Continue reading »The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
I am on record as being rather ambivalent about the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy that Peter Jackson fashioned a decade ago. They are certainly well made movies, but I cannot connect with them in any meaningful way. Middle Earth […]
Continue reading »The Butler (2013) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Although Lee Daniels’ newest film, The Butler, features some terrific actors (including Oprah Winfrey in her acting return to the big screen after more than a decade), it is a strange amalgam of a movie that will probably satisfy few […]
Continue reading »Dallas Buyers Club (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆
Another entrant in the “based on a true story” movie sweepstakes is this fact-based drama centered on the efforts of Ron Woodroof (Matthew McConaughey) to survive his exposure to HIV in the 1980s. Apart from a few visual anachronisms, the […]
Continue reading »Philomena (2013) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
Movies “based on a true story” are all the rage this season, and some of them, like Captain Phillips and this one, are very good indeed. Truth is often stranger than fiction, and fictionalized truth — in the form of movies […]
Continue reading »Homefront (2013) ☆ ☆
I wasn’t expecting much from this Southern style revenge action flick, so I was pleasantly surprised by certain elements of it. The story has a former DEA agent (Jason Statham) and his young daughter trying to build a new life […]
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