Love is Strange is such an understated piece of filmmaking that some may not realize just how powerful it is. The story’s protagonists are two upper-middle-aged gay men who’ve just gotten married, but it is notRead Full Review

Life After Beth is another in a string of projects headed by Aubrey Plaza in an effort to streamline the comedienne’s transition from television’s hit show Parks and Recreation to film stardom. Plaza is beautiful and legitimately funny,Read Full Review

I’m not sure who was asking for a Big Chill for millennials, but we just got it. It’s an interesting thing to watch a film like About Alex which is so sentimental and obsessed with nostalgia that it’s bothRead Full Review

The Vatican sits in Rome, but no culture is more tightly linked or more implicated by the Catholic Church than the Irish. A large part of their existence is dictated by the strict ideals ofRead Full Review

If we’re considering Guardians of the Galaxy to be amongst the very best of the twenty-first century superheroes movies era – and it seems like we are – I think that most of it’s success, and thatRead Full Review

Here’s an interesting statistic: there hasn’t been a single year in my life in which Woody Allen hasn’t released a new film. His institution is well known, but for me personally, the arrival of each new filmRead Full Review

The two main characters in Land Ho! are purposefully crafted with such contrasting personalities, a boon toward the odd couple dynamic that’s played throughout the film. Paul Eenhoorn is an Australian actor whose silky accent compliments hisRead Full Review

In Richard Linklater’s beloved Before trilogy, Ethan Hawke plays a novelist named Jesse. In Before Sunset and Before Midnight, Jesse is given a particular scene to describe his ideas for future novels and all of his interests seem to dealRead Full Review

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is not like most of the sequels coming out this summer (or the last five summers, really). The only characters that have stuck around from the 2011 Rise of theRead Full Review

When Roger Ebert died in April of last year, I wrote a long piece about it on this blog in which I hoped to put across that there is not a single writer that I have readRead Full Review

With the release of Once in 2007, Irish director John Carney showed that he has a real connection with pop music and a real talent for displaying that connection on the big screen. Most of the creditRead Full Review

Films with inherent nihilism, like Snowpiercer, usually fight an uphill battle with American audiences. The film is made by famed South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho, whose Mother and The Host showcased his incredible talent with tension and stylistic violence. Snowpiercer is hisRead Full Review

The How To Train Your Dragon series has very quietly become the best that DreamWorks Animation has to offer. The original film and its new sequel are funny in a sweet kind of way and market themselvesRead Full Review

There have been many films that strive to be the kind of subversive romantic comedy that Obvious Child is. The film is the brain child of filmmaker Gillian Robespierre, who made the film as a short backRead Full Review

Comedies like 22 Jump Street are always one step ahead of you. It’s seemingly perfect contrast of absurdity and subversive realism makes it impossible to make judgments – you can’t nitpick because it’s already nitpicked itself. 2012’s 21Read Full Review

When I initially saw the image of Tom Cruise running around in a metallic exoskeleton from the first production still of Edge of Tomorrow I was overcome with disappointment. Cruise has spent the better part of aRead Full Review

We see We Are The Best! through the eyes of adolescents seeking attention and adoration during a time in their lives where they are at their most emotionally vulnerable. It showcases a time where all can seemRead Full Review

If classic Disney fans were as rabid as comic book fans, I think there may be some flames and pitchforks coming after the revisionist history within Maleficent. The character, so popular as the antagonist from 1959’s SleepingRead Full Review

James Gray makes movies suited for a bygone era. His best film (Two Lovers) has several calling cards of the more personal dramatic films of the 1970’s. He doesn’t seem to have much an appreciationRead Full Review

Say what you will about Jon Favreau the filmmaker, he’s always had a knack for finding what most audiences want. His taste is just the kind of broad competency that a major Hollywood studio canRead Full Review

If we weren’t living in a world in which 12 Years a Slave was released just a year ago, Belle‘s release may have been considered more important. Belle‘s approach is almost completely inverted from Steve McQueen’s film. It seesRead Full Review

In 1995, during the Fourth of July Weekend, Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day dazzled moviegoers with the grandiosity with which it chose to destroy the world. Los Angeles? Boom! The White House? Zap Bang! The Statue of Liberty?Read Full Review

It must be embarrassing for Lars von Trier to watch Young & Beautiful and realize that French filmmaker Francois Ozon accomplished everything that he wished to accomplish in his opus Nymphomaniac in nearly a quarter of the time. IRead Full Review

At its basest form, Locke is a gimmick film. Whether it’s fair to do so or not, it’s easy to imagine the responsible filmmaker creating the basic conceit (for this film: one character driving in a carRead Full Review

Nicolas Cage is a fascinating Hollywood persona. He has serious acting chops, but they’re so often misplaced in performances and films that can’t handle him. He’s not like other movie stars, who can just turnRead Full Review

Last year’s Prisoners proved that director Denis Villeneuve wanted to be included in the club of contemporary filmmakers trying to become this generation’s Hitchcock. David Fincher, generally considered the best, most formalistically proficient director of Hollywood suspenseRead Full Review

The quality of narrative within American animated films has risen so incredibly within the last two decades, so much so that Pixar is far from the only animation studio making delightfully entertaining movies for allRead Full Review

The list is endless with film titles detailing the taxing burden of marriage, the soul-sucking slog that follows the ‘Happily Ever After’ so many other stories like to finish on. Two for the Road and Blue Valentine, twoRead Full Review

The overall majesty of Wes Anderson is tough to pinpoint. There’s a downright stubbornness to the dedication he brings to his precious, dioramic stories, and with each film, there is a creeping feeling that theRead Full Review

The empire of Studio Ghibli is about to lose its foremost patriarch, the legendary filmmaker Hayao Mayazaki – or so he says. His latest film, The Wind Rises, is meant to be his final work beforeRead Full Review

George Clooney’s directorial efforts come pre-packaged with ideas and statements, with thought-provoking ideals meant to help the human race improve. Perhaps the one exception is his first film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but that wasRead Full Review

A performance like Paulina Garcia’s in Gloria is difficult to appreciate properly. On the surface, it seems dictated by its physicality and carnality, which is why more sexually explicit storytelling doesn’t translate as successfully in American cinema.Read Full Review

The two directors behind this year’s first legitimate box office blockbuster (no shade on Ride Along, I just think that movie was a much bigger surprise then people expected it to be) have proven adapt atRead Full Review

The Great Beauty has Federico Fellini’s fingerprints all over it. The specter of Marcello Mastroianni, Fellini’s most famous acting collaborator, haunts all of its images. And yet, Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film feels so incredibly fresh andRead Full Review

It’s difficult to make a military film that’s as unapologetically patriotic as Lone Survivor is because it just doesn’t seem that cool. It’s not cool to be so proudly American because that’ll align you with the TeaRead Full Review

Walter Mitty sincerely wants to be taken seriously, but goes about doing so in some rather interesting ways. It’s directed by it’s star, Ben Stiller, with a lot of showy shots, usually equipped with a highRead Full Review

Many important filmmakers are copied, homaged, even straight ripped off. These influences usually guide filmmakers to find their own voices as they weed through the fields of their heroes, and in a lot of casesRead Full Review

Meryl Streep is a goddess amongst us mere humans; it’s essentially been a known fact that she is our greatest living actress since the beginning of this century, possibly beforehand. I’ve been known to getRead Full Review

When I learned of the overall premise of Saving Mr. Banks, I immediately began suffering PTSD of my horrid viewing of the 2004 film, Finding Neverland. In that film, we learn that author J.M. Barry (played withRead Full Review

I remember watching the Oscar broadcast in 2004, where great films like Mystic River and Lost in Translation were forced to bow down to Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which won a record-tying elevenRead Full Review

For all of the fantastical visual elements within the features, short films and music videos of Spike Jonze, his storytelling persona has always been dedicated to a very tender, particularly humane tale of life. They’reRead Full Review

David O. Russell’s latest film opens with some text that reads: “Some of This Actually Happened”. It’s a funny little blurb to throw up on the screen which seems like a much more honest representationRead Full Review

For as brilliant and celebrated as the Coen Brothers are, I’m not sure you can go through their filmography and find a performance like Oscar Isaac has in their latest film, Inside Llewyn Davis. They assistedRead Full Review

The last decade and a half of film animation has been so thoroughly dominated by Pixar studios that at times it has seemed like no one else has even put up a fight, least ofRead Full Review

Stephen Frears is one of the most consistent filmmakers working today, which makes it all the more unsettling that he’s spent his last few movies orchestrating English prestige Oscar bait. When you think that heRead Full Review

Bruce Dern is a seventy-three year old actor who’s spent most of those years working consistently as a Hollywood character actor. He was at the peak of his powers in the 1970’s, with bombastic performancesRead Full Review

The Book Thief really means well, and the overall nice-ness of the storytelling here makes it hard to really dislike. In it’s purest form, this is really a story built for children, based on Markus Zusak’sRead Full Review

It’s hard not to feel like Matthew McConaughey’s recent career resurgence is reaching its crescendo here with Dallas Buyers Club. It’s a striking performance, so captivating and virile. He famously lost 35 pounds, and its aRead Full Review

If certain straight people think that homosexuality is too mainstream, they should go and watch Blue is the Warmest Color. It’s bullish, in-your-face and doesn’t hide it’s romantic entanglements behind narrative structure. It won the prestigiousRead Full Review