I’ve said before that sometimes I need time before I write about a movie. Usually, that’s just a couple or a few days to let a movie sit and settle inside of my mind, wanting my review to reflect not only my gut reaction but also any lingering impressions. American Sniper, though, took weeks. Several…
A Most Violent Year was a welcome movie that was just what you want sometimes at this stage of the Oscar-watching madness when I saw this in early February: simply a good movie. Good acting. Good story. Good entertainment. And an absence of heavy controversy. (Don’t get me wrong, you all know that I love…
Still Alice is one of the great movies of the year that everyone should see. It’s heartbreaking. It’s earnest. It’s painful. It’s real. No, it’s not based on a true story, but it is based on deep research. The premise is early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease, and although at its base it really is just the story…
A French film (with subtitles), but not nominated as Best Foreign film, Two Days, One Night came on my radar through its fantastic performance by its lead actress, Marion Cotillard. Cotillard has the nomination for Best Actress (some say taking the spot otherwise that would have gone to Jennifer Aniston for Cake), and Cotillard, as…
This is the first I’ve seen the animated Oscar-nominated shorts. Thus, I was ill-equipped to be able to better warn my girlfriends who came along with me. No, these are not happy, singing Disny-style animated pieces. What they are, though, are an eclectic blend of fantastic displays of depth, emotion, imagination, and realism. Some made…
Go see the Oscar-nominated live action short films! What a delightful two hours, watching five separate films, varying in length between about 14 and 45 minutes. Jacksonvillians, they’re playing at SunRay for the next week, and given that you can get yummy food and beer and wine there all while supporting local small business, what…
Anything that could have been funny was, as is too often the case, overplayed in trailers. The rest failed to hold either my attention or any desire to stay awake. The acting seemed phoned in with a forced script, pretty much just completing the call to get that next paycheck. This is unfortunate, though, as…
*Warning: Spoiler Alert in this first paragraph for the movie Titanic* To begin, let me request that no one sum up this movie (Foxcatcher) by giving away what happens. I could hardly believe that someone, in discussing movies, said in one line about Foxcatcher the equivalent of saying about Titanic, “Oh, that’s that movie about…
Wish I Was Here is a nice enough movie even if too predictable. It’s surface-good, and there are some great moments and quality, subtle commentaries on issues, but there’s just not enough underneath that can elevate it higher to being more than just good enough. Kate Hudson was less cute than normal, maybe trying to…
The Homesman is a dreary movie, but dreariness aside, it’s also a good movie. It shows the brutal and bitter side of frontier life, a life I cannot imagine how—or why—those brave souls in the past took on. But it shows too how that life destroyed not only lives but minds of some of those…
I saw Cake as more than a movie about a woman addicted to prescription pain pills. And it’s more than a movie about a woman recovering from a debilitating accident. That said, it could have been even more. I’m not sure how, but something was off. Jennifer Anniston was not one of those off things,…
The trailer for Inherent Vice made it seem that this movie would be a fun, quirky (albeit a little dark) movie with a fantastic cast. At the end of the film, the only word I really came up with, though, was “bizarre.” And bizarre is too far from quirky for me. Not that the movie…
Fun, fast read that made me laugh out loud. Told in a refreshing manner with select email exchanges being read by another, with that person’s story shared in more detail, the book kept me wanting to know more and cheering for a happy ending. That said, the ending was not at all as I expected…
Dear Committee Members reads to me like a secret file on one’s computer where, when asked to write a recommendation letter, one pens what promptly (sassily, and sometimes even passive aggressively) comes to mind, sniping and smirking and shaming and such only to then start with a new, blank document and write the letter actually…
Boyhood was a great film to watch, even if it wasn’t a particularly great film. The premise, filming a movie using the same cast over a twelve-year period, filmed to watch as Mason grows from the pictured six-year-old to a young man graduating from high school, is unique and makes the movie stand out. And…