While We’re Young is a pleasant, easy movie, good for some relaxing and enjoyable laughs. Set as a movie regarding a couple in their early 40s at the crossroads of watching a carefree youth set sail over the horizon while they settle down into the stable, shored life they’ve built for themselves, the film rings…
An Honest Liar is a wonderfully interesting, engaging, intriguing documentary that tells you a story while delivering a side of nostalgia and a satisfying serving of information. The film focuses on “The Amazing Randi,” a magician who appeared on stage predominantly in the 50s through 70s. But what makes his story particularly compelling is the…
What clever fun! What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary (yep, new word I’d never heard until this flick) that takes a “real world”-ish view of a few vampires who share a flat in New Zealand. And it does it with wit and a wink and a whole lot of laughter. On the…
Horror. For the most part, this isn’t my typical genre I prefer when seeing movies. As much as I loved the original Halloween, Friday the 13th, and I’m sure others (although I *still* have never visited Elm Street or played with Chucky), at some point, everything became too formulaic and predictable. The fright was less.…
I cannot say that The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is an excellent movie. But I can say that it was a wonderful pleasure to watch. Sure, it’s contrived and predictable and not deep enough. But it’s also gentle and sweet and full of love and life. It’s not as fresh as the first, as…
Goodness, how does this happen? I saw Citizen Four back in November. I know that I did. I went with a group. It’s on my calendar. I saw it. But I never wrote about it. How does this happen? But just now, watching the Oscars much past my bedtime, I recalled that I’d indeed seen…
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…