Backcountry is a well-acted film with a familiar premis
Foxcatcher chronicles the tragic partnership of multi-m
Hell hath no fury like a fairy whose wings have been
In recent days, I have found nothing more frightening than the eerie uncanniness and timelessness of Clueless. The Amy Heckerling film from 1995 that stars Alicia Silverstone in a parody of Jane Austen’s Emma introduced a number of regrettable phrases into our lexicon, but also foreshadowed the dilapidating education system throughout the country, limning it as one […]
Surely, there are moments in Airplane! (1980) that would confuse anyone not alive in the 1980’s. Today of course, smoking is prohibited on planes – and most everywhere else – the lax, simple security screeners went away thirteen years ago, food without an extortionate price tag is no longer served on flights. Most noticeably, the films form […]
The Croods explores the impeding power of fear and the darkest parts of evolution.
The first five minutes of Lone Survivor feels like an advertisement for the Navy. The film opens with the training of Navy SEALS. With each one that rings the bell three times and quits, another perseveres and harnesses their freezing, shaking, breaking down bodies into an unconscious aggression. Peter Berg brings his familiar Friday Night Lights style […]
Desolation of Smaug will become the most memorable chapter, but this doesn’t make it any more substantial than the first.
“It’s new and it never gets old,” Llewyn Davis tells the audience twice in the Coen brothers’ emotionaly powerful new film, Inside Llewyn Davis. Set in 1961 Greenwhich Village, the film follows one week in the life of Llewyn Davis, a nomadic folk singer who must routinely way his need for money against his refusal to abandon […]
Enough Said honestly depicts the evolution of marriage, divorce, and the aftermath.
Paul Walker’s role in Hours is a departure from the most familiar Brian O’Conner that occupies the various Fast-speckled franchise. As Nolan Hayes, he is asked to find a deeper emotional peril as a husband who has recently lost his wife and a father who is on the verge of losing his prematurely-born daughter in the wake […]
First and foremost, Blackfish, the 2013 documentary from Gabriela Cowperthwaite, makes me regret visiting Sea World when I was nine years old. More importantly as a documentary, Blackfish exposes a large tourist attraction as little more than a shady zoo for aquatic life and humans alike. Orca whales are the main attraction in both the documentary Sea World. In particular, […]
For a bit, Saving Mr. Banks offers a look at artistic integrity in battle with the Hollywood machine. Around 1961, P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), author of the beloved Mary Poppins, begins to see her income dwindle. The books have stopped selling, she has not written another installment, and the royalties have ceased. Here, she is faced with […]
