My Awards for the Movies of the Year
With all the attention on all things movies tonight, I thought it would be fun to do my own roll call for the movies of the recent past year (Don’t know what to call them,…
Top 10 Documentaries of 2014
With all the things concerning fictional narrative films out of the way for 2014, lets get to the non-fictional ones as there were several to take in, discover and enlighten. Not unlike the fictional narratives…
Scenery Theory: On Depiction and Intent
Clint Eastwood’s latest war drama American Sniper is breaking box-office records in this early new year, nominated for several oscars including best picture and actor, and perhaps inevitably has started to stir controversy splitting audiences and critics…
The Top 60 Movie Moments That Defined The 60’s: Part 2
We move on from Part 1 to Kubrick, Military Takeovers, Alienation, and Abstraction. A rather crowded line-up to be sure. Lets get started with empathizing with pedophilia! I apologize in advance. 50). Lolita Expresses Sexual Taboos With…
Top 10 Supporting Performances of 2014
Thursday was the leading characters, today it’s the supporting players that amplify the onscreen story by giving the main characters something to play off of. Engaging the audience a few more layers by revealing more…
Film
The Top 60 Movie Moments That Defined The 60’s: Part 1
There are very few consecutive modern decades that share as little in common as the 50’s slowly transformed into the 60’s, going…
Movie Reviews
Foxcatcher Review
There is the scene in the trailer for Bennet Miller’s unbearably tense olympic wrestling docu-drama where multi-millionaire John du Pont (Steve Carell)…
Top Tens
Top 10 Lead Performances of 2014
An outstanding year for film usually means an outstanding one for performances as well. First up are the lead roles that acted…
My Ten Favorite Roger Ebert Movie Reviews
Today marks what would’ve been the late great influential film…
More Articles
Two Days, One Night Review
Every writer from Shakespeare to Mamet will give you the same kind of gist: “Keep It Simple Stupid”. The Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, prove this time and again in their filmmaking and emphatically with their most recent project here. Marion Cotillard continues to yield…
Interstellar Review
I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. -E.E Cummings I find that my own enjoyment and appreciation of all Christopher Nolan films come from just realizing the sheer audacity of his complicated and…
Whiplash Review
What would you be willing to put yourself through to achieve your idea of greatness? Teacher/student relationships have always been heavily romanticized in movies for years; the ability to inspire young minds to believe in themselves in order to accomplish great things is no easy…
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) Review
“A thing is a thing, not what is said of the thing” “There are no second acts in American lives” For those paying very close attention to the frequently used tags word cloud on the right-hand side of my site, one will notice the ones…
T.V Show Review: Manhattan S1
It is an interesting coincidence that I referenced the Manhattan Project earlier this year in my The Wind Rises review and especially highlighted the quote: “I have become death; destroyer of worlds.” Because for the characters on the new outstanding WGN historical dramatic series J.R Oppenheimer’s eventual quote…
Gone Girl Review
There is the religious platitude that anyone associated with law is supposed to adhere to and impart: that “the truth will set you free”, but what is rarely mentioned is just how suffocating, bleak and painful the ‘Truth’ can be until it does, if ever.…
The Drop Review
It’s always amazing to observe the temporal reductive power of film, what a film has to do while unfolding its story. A movie that spends a little over a month with characters in under two hours must still feel like we have gotten to know…
Scenery Theory: Visual Imprinting In The 25th Hour
25th Hour is one of my favorite films of all-time and Barry Pepper is one of my favorite character actors working out there today, and the scene that showcases exactly why is encapsulated in Spike Lee’s important, resonating and masterful 25th Hour one of the very finest…
Mood Indigo Review
I’m back with a vengeance. Well, where to begin with this one? How about I begin by getting it out of the way, I’m not a fan of this one. There is an old adage that for a movie to succeed you need three great…
Young and Beautiful Review
For those of you who thought Nymphomaniac was not sexually liberal enough. Leave it to the French to make a story of an underage prostitute tasteful and endearing. Meet Isabelle, a precocious, spoiled, detached, rebellious and beautiful french teenager blossoming on verge of adulthood. While vacationing…