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…
*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…
This story needed to be told in this medium. This story needed to be told. I saw Selma today, on the first day of its wide release, needing to see it alone. I knew I could not tolerate seeing this film with anyone who cannot even try to understand the issues of voter disenfranchisement or…
For many (if not most) people, watching Wild will be a view from the outside of a woman on a journey to heal her soul as she hikes the Pacific Crest Trail. For me, it was a journey of my own as I tested the fortitude of the healing scars of my own path. Wild…
Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a stellar performance in The Imitation Game. Although I’ve not seen him as Sherlock, after watching this movie, I want to. This is more than just a great performance. This is a great movie—one that provides Cumberbatch the prime stage on which to shine. As the story about Alan Turing, the genius…
In the world of narcissists, Walter Keane is the poster child. Christopher Waltz’s portrayal of him, while seemingly obscenely overdone, is probably spot on. That’s the sort of person it would take, after all, to be that much of a con—and a con who not only convinced those around him of what he wanted, but…
Dark and gritty, Nightcrawler takes viewers on a ride with Jake Gyllenhaal at the wheel. Buckle up: it’s a wild one. I was tired the night I saw this film, having not slept well the previous night. And alas, the theater we planned to visit changed its schedule, so we had to change plans from…
Whiplash is a movie about passion. And although passion can be a wonderful quality, at times, it can also take someone too far. It can grip too tightly. It can create an irrational justification for behavior. It can sever humanity from the human. It can hurt. Having seen the trailer for Whiplash a few times,…
If you’ve read many of my movie reviews and impressions over the past, you know that this is the time of year my visits to the theater increase as those Oscar-worthy movies start gracing the screens. I seek lists on the web for what movies might make the cut come nomination time. Birdman was on…
At the end of Grand Budapest Hotel, I wanted to clap my hands in delight. Indeed—delight best sums up how I felt about the film. It was a fun, quirky, witty romp along a tale of eccentric antics, fabulously entertaining in spite of the darker thread of the war coming to Europe. Having that pending…
Having started this book just before Christmas, it took some time to finish—me needing to give up reading-for-pleasure for a bit when I was barely a quarter way through. But somehow, that seemed right with this tale. The Goldfinch covers a span of time. And it does so patiently, endearingly, and with a strange tenderness…
I’m sandwiching my weekend with two foreign films; other than having seen both previews, this is all else I knew going in, from NPR: “Audiences are being offered an intriguing exercise in double vision over the next couple of weeks: two movies about Palestinian informants and their complicated relationships with Israel’s secret service, one directed…
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…
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…
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…