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Recent Reviews
- Good Kill – An artistic exploration of drone assassinations
- Citizenfour – a fascinating and important topic, but a disappointing documentary
- Interstellar – Probably the best film of the year, certainly the most enjoyable!
- Laggies – a delightful little film about late-blooming misfits
- Two Days, One Night – it’s (almost) exactly what you expect it to be
- Whiplash – a disgusting, stupidly manipulative piece of absurdity.
- Still Alice – big stars, big production, but still just a Hallmark movie of the week
- Wild – it’s surprisingly well-made and fun to watch
- Black Sea – diverting, but sadly predictable
- Birdman (Or the Expected Emptiness of Pretension)
- Mr. Turner – Planet of the Ape
- The Imitation Game – It’s an abomination
- A Brief Word on the 2014 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
- Kill The Messenger – The important and tragic story of Gary Webb, the mainstream media, and the CIA
- This is Where I Leave You – the latest in a long line of “family reunion” movies
- A review of summer cinema – it was pretty grim!
- The Trip to Italy – It never should have been made
- A Most Wanted Man – Superficially entertaining, but poorly-made and overrated
- Magic in the Moonlight – It’s pissing me off!
- The Purge: Anarchy – Surprisingly, it’s rather good
- I Origins – ambitious and entertaining
- Boyhood – a bit one dimensional, but its one dimension is lovely, impressive and fun to experience
- Obvious Child – cute, dignified and gutsy
- Snowpiercer – a fantastic, riveting science fiction action allegory
- Edge of Tomorrow – it’s fairly entertaining
- Begin Again – confronting the future of pop music head-on
- The Fault in Our Stars – not super-moving, but definitely enjoyable
- Hellion – a gritty tale of fucked up parents and children
- Night Moves – a cool, subtle portrayal of hippy-liberal activism turned violent
- Cold In July – an outstandingly fun and unusual film, and a paean for the 1980s
- Austenland – so horrible, I’m speechless
- Elena – 80 minutes of torture
- Lucky Them – Toni Collette takes center stage and lights up the screen!
- Belle – it means well, but God is it slow (and dull)
- Finding Vivian Maier – an okay documentary on a fascinating artist
- The German Doctor (Wakolda) – Diverting, but feels more than a little contrived
- Chef – it’s heart is in the right place
- Jodorowsky’s Dune – a bizarre and amazing documentary
- Hateship, Loveship – it goes down well
- Divergent – entertaining, but there’s a lot wrong with it
Category Archives: 2013
Saving Mr. Banks – it’s rather underwhelming
My wife and I went to see Saving Mr. Banks because we are Emma Thompson fans from back in the day, and we have (to our mutual surprise) recently become Tom Hanks fans. The film seemed okay as I was … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Enough Said – it’s cute
Enough Said has hung on in New York City theaters for four months, and for four months I’ve been avoiding it, mainly because I’ve never been a fan of James Gandolfini (RIP), I’ve come to despise Catherine Keener, I’ve never felt … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Night Train to Lisbon – really enjoyable, with a great story and great characters
Night Train to Lisbon is the kind of film that professional critics love to hate: a somewhat contrived feeling, good-natured, intellectual adventure story, with themes of love, life, politics and history, and (worst of all) a happy ending. But the … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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Blue is the Warmest Color (La vie d’Adèle) – a mesmerizing and sensual little film, with deep themes
I’m always very curious what the Cannes Film Festival thinks is a great film. There have been some truly great movies that have won the top prize (The Conversation, Missing, Secrets and Lies,) and some truly horrible ones as well … Continue reading
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American Hustle – incredibly, it lives up to the hype
American Hustle was a very pleasant surprise. Usually these “big” movies, with their big, bloated stars and their huge advertising budgets, turn out to be bitter disappointments. But not in this case; American Hustle turned out to be better than … Continue reading
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist – an ambitious movie, but rather flawed
Despite its various artistic failings, The Reluctant Fundamentalist was still quite an enjoyable movie. The lead actors (Riz Ahmed, Liev Schreiber) are warm, fun to watch, and give good performances, and the film’s sense of place is really strong and compelling; … Continue reading
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Narco Cultura – a very remarkable and thought-provoking documentary, but with some failings
I caught Narco Cultura at Cinema Village this week; the only other people in the audience were two friends of the film’s composer Jeremy Turner, and a couple of homeless bag ladies camping out. It’s sad that no one sees … Continue reading
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The Last Days on Mars – It’s exciting, and quite good (for a monster movie)
The story idea of The Last Days on Mars is superficially similar to this year’s Europa Report: a manned mission to another planet runs into complications. But Last Days on Mars is a much more artistically limited film, possessing none … Continue reading
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Inside Llewyn Davis – intellectuals are so easily dazzled
My wife and I went to see Inside Llewyn Davis at 2:00 on a Saturday in the Union Square 14. It was playing the big theater and it was packed! There was a long line for the showing after ours. Every … Continue reading
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The Hunger Games: Catching Fire – it’s actually pretty decent
The first book of the Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games, was a gripping and fantastically written story that the movie version more-or-less completely ruined, by dumbing it down into a Twilight-like commercial vehicle (see my review of it here.) … Continue reading
Posted in 2013
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