The Broken Circle Breakdown is a Belgian film highlighting bluegrass music and frustrations with traditional religion and evangelical influences in politics and medicine as told through the relationship, love, and despair of two artists. I did not get to see the other foreign films up for an Oscar this year, and I’m not sure this…
My 2014 Oscar movie road ended with a viewing of American Hustle—one of the movies I had so anticipated all year after seeing the first trailer that was merely a stream of scenes woven together to the tunes of fantastic music. The names promised a great movie. And the actors behind those names did not…
August: Osage County presents a painful, bitter, sad look at family dysfunction without much hope or goodness involved. It is a harsh look at a family struggling through addiction, death, manipulation, divorce, infidelity, suicide, and mental illness. The raw nature of the emotional journey of the family picked with sharp nails at the scabs of…
It’s been several weeks since I saw Her. My delay in writing, though, should not reflect a bit on how good this movie was. It was good. And what a surprise of a lot of warmth I found in this quirky little movie. When I saw the trailers, it felt formulaic. It felt forced. It…
Inside Llewyn Davis is an enjoyable movie—dare I say, an easy movie. After the other movies I’ve seen this season, it was a nice change. Don’t get me wrong: this isn’t a pretty movie or a happy movie. But it’s basic. It’s also basic done very well. It doesn’t have a grand statement on life;…
Big. Loud. Fast. Vulgar. Cheap. Depressing. Flashy. Pathetic. Ambitious. Empty. Yes. I saw The Wolf of Wall Street. And yes, it was all that and more. Late last summer when I was looking for new books to read, I decided to check out those due out soon as movies. Wolf was one such book. But…
If you are over 40, please be sure you see Nebraska. It’s an incredible heartwarming, emotion-tugging, eye-opening, reality-grounding, laugh-out-loud film about aging, parents, family, middle-age, love, acceptance, understanding, and life. And it is excellent. Granted, for the first half hour, I found myself waiting for one of Will Forte’s SNL characters to turn to the…
Saving Mr. Banks does exactly what was expected: it entertains, it makes you reminisce fondly over a beloved movie, it allows you to tap your toe, it brings tears to your eyes, and it leaves you smiling. But underneath the showy layers of the Disney Corporation’s securing the rights to make Mary Poppins lies a…
Slow and quiet, this movie is; but even the strong acting performances in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints could not grab my attention enough to fight lack of sleep and lingering jet lag. Admittedly, it probably wasn’t fair that I watched the movie on a flight shortly after take-off. Still, I found myself repeatedly dozing off,…
The summer was full of “coming of age” movies, telling the tales of those turning the page from the teens toward adulthood. But Frances Ha finds the real time of coming of age to adulthood—those years in the late 20s when’s so many truly figure out how to settle into the person they’ve become. The…
Matthew McConaughey delivers what I see as his best performance to date in Dallas Buyer’s Club, a movie great enough in its own right in telling its own incredibly compelling story but made remarkable by what McConaughey brings. Add Jared Leto, whose acting trumps McConaughey’s, and this is indeed a must-see film. The story, which…
What Robert Redford does with the expression on his face, the stare of his gaze, the slump of his shoulders – – – all work to demonstrate the true skill and craft that is acting. Whether he was perfectly suited for the role or the role for him, it is a match unlike most. I…
Having loved the book, I was intrigued to see how the movie would tell Liesel’s story. As with most adaptations, pieces were left out, blended, added, discounted, and hidden. But my experience reading the book was so recent, I was easily able to fill in many of the gaps (e.g., I giggled when Mama first…
Dame Judith Dench delivers a performance that amazed me at her ability to show how deep shame can run and how strong a grasp it keeps on a soul. Her quiet looks, her grimaced face, her bright glimpses of getting past, only to see her shrink back beneath the suffocating covers of inflicted and ingrained…
Fun. Flashy. Frivolous. I wanted to see this when it came out—on the big screen. But time slipped past. Sitting on a non-nighttime seven-hour flight created in me a captive audience, delighted to find this film on Delta’s “on demand” list. (I also watched Water for Elephants, but no review will be here as it’s…