When the producers of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows announced they would split the final chapter of Harry’s saga into two movies, we all knew it was a blatant attempt to wring a little more money out of the franchise. For the most part, the last two Harry Potter movies worked… the book provided enough material to sustain the conflict over that much screen time. Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay, though, didn’t. And part 1 of the final chapter of the Hunger Games trilogy suffers for it. Read More  Read More

Birdman is a rare beast. The new film by Alejandro González Iñárritu skirts the line between fantasy and reality with just the right touch of mysticism and grit. This might push Nightcrawler out of the way as the best movie of 2014. Iñárritu, director of such movies as 21 Grams and Biutiful, knows how to find the right balance between farcical comedy and heartfelt drama without resorting to emotional vomit. Whereas in The Judge, the tonal shifts felt forced, everything in Birdman works. It’s unpredictable, fun, touching, sometimes shocking. Read More  Read More

The new film by Christopher Nolan, director of Inception and the Batman movies (no, not the Michael Keaton movies, if that’s what you were hoping) has just released his new film, Interstellar. I’ve been waiting for this movie for months, gobbling up trailers, anticipating, hoping it would be everything I wanted it to be. I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn’t blown away, either. Read More  Read More

No, not the comic book character. Nightcrawler is a film starring Jake Gyllenhaal (and thank you, spellcheck, for the assist on that one. I would never get that right on my own) about the ambitious Louis Bloom, who stumbles into working as a freelance videographer. He then sells his footage to a news organization, and he’s determined to work his way up from nothing to a position of importance. This is a movie wrought with tension and anxiety. It’s stressful to watch, which is ironic, since it’s mostly about people filming stuff. But all of that tension and anxiety serve to make... Read More

On principle, I’m against Tom Cruise. The couch-jumping, Xenu-praising freak gets way too much attention as is. But sort of like Kanye West, Tom Cruise offstage and Tom Cruise offstage are different beasts. I thought this was going to be a dumb action movie, but the pre-release reviews were glowing. So I gave it a try. Read More  Read More

When I was a little kid and saw The Karate Kid for the first time (obviously, the Ralph Macchio version, not the Jaden Smith version), the movie immediately made me want to learn karate. same with Top Gun. After that, I wanted to fly airplanes, wear Aviator sunglasses, and have a cool nickname like Ace or Torpedo or something. I had thought maybe Kill The Messenger might do the same thing for being a journalist. But not so much. This is a good movie, but it’s not exactly feel-good pro-journalism material. If you know the true tale of Gary Webb, you know things don’t end well for our... Read More

Robert Downey Junior has to be one of the most charismatic and likable actors working in Hollywood. That’s why, in The Judge, it’s easy not to despise his character, Hank Palmer. Give this same role to a unknown actor, and no way would we root for this guy to come out on top. Hank Palmer is a flashy, conceited Chicago lawyer who acts like he’s got it all figured out, but his marriage is falling apart. When his mother dies and he returns home for her funeral, his father (Robert Duvall) is arrested for murder. Hank feels he has no choice but to stay in Indiana to represent his... Read More

First of all, let me say how hard it will be to review this movie without spoilers, since it’s a plot-twist-apalooza spoiler minefield. But here we go: Nick and Amy Dunne live in suburban Missouri, a couple settled in to mid-marriage unhappiness. Their lives haven’t turned out the way they predicted, but things are about to flip upside down when Nick comes home to a ransacked house, and the police investigation into Amy’s disappearance begins. I can’t say more without spoiling too much, so I’ll cut the synopsis there. Read More  Read More

The Skeleton Twins is an iceberg. Hold on, lemme explain. A good movie doesn’t throw buckets of information at you right away, drowning you in exposition. A good movie inserts just the right amount of mystery, which creates tension, which leaves you intrigued. You watch intently because you need to have your questions answered. The Skeleton Twins does just that. It plays like snippets of a much larger story, with a rich history that we’re only meant to guess at as the movie unfolds. Little bits of info surface at key moments, but the majority remains left unsaid. That brand... Read More

The Maze Runner: Teenagers in Trouble This weekend, I had a choice between Maze Runner and A Walk Among The Tombstones, a gritty thriller in which Liam Neeson reprises his role from Taken plays a new, totally non-Taken character. I chose the Maze Runner, and this is my story. My favorite part of the evening may have been the trailer for Interstellar, the Christopher Nolan/Matthew McConaughey Oscar-bait film coming out later this year. Man, that looks exciting. I can’t wait to hear the time-is-a-flat-circle-in-space monologue. Read More  Read More