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It’s been a while since Tim Burton has offered up a movie that wasn’t A.) drenched in weirdness-as-affectation, B.) smothered in heavy-handed effects, C.) beaten into delirium with gratuitous Johnny Depp, or D.) all of the above. With Big Eyes, however, he seems ready to throw aside his stylistic crutches and tell a simple story. However, even with much of … Continue reading
Visually sumptuous but otherwise hollow, Ridley Scott’s take on the Biblical tale of Moses could use a little more wrath of God to perk it up a bit. It’s not a bad movie per se, it’s just that it fails to pull us in the way it should. You don’t watch Exodus: Gods and Kings, … Continue reading
A strong debut film by The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart, there’s still some room for improvement in the earnest and entirely nonthreatening Rosewater. Some first-time filmmakers opt for going full-bore with their freshman work, laying on the style and emotion in sloppy layers as if the project were the only movie they were ever going to … Continue reading
Christopher Nolan is a filmmaker’s filmmaker, a creatively restless soul who challenges both himself to push the boundaries of his skills and his chosen medium, as well as to challenge the notions of viewers who show up for his movies. This is largely a good thing; his films occasionally feel overstuffed, but never fail to make … Continue reading
A messy but intriguing and enjoyably warped slice of modern film noir as only Los Angeles can flavor it, Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler isn’t quite the searing indictment of the “if it bleeds, it leads” TV news ethos, but it is one hell of a character study of a video journalist as high-functioning sociopath. That’s largely … Continue reading
A bizarre hybrid of a midlife crisis comedy and a backstage drama, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is the kind of philosophical and challenging film the director is known surprisingly pitched with a playfulness that he’s never used before. The material isn’t as morose as Amores Perros or 21 Grams or … Continue reading
While it borrows liberally from Saving Private Ryan (aka the All Quiet On the Western Front of modern war movies) and doesn’t exactly rise above its obvious formula, David Ayer’s Fury is nevertheless an effective WWII drama that reminds that war is hell — specifically, one soaked in blood, mud, fire, and death. It’s a tad … Continue reading
Love is a many-splintered thing in Gone Girl, a gleefully snarky satire disguised as a thriller directed by David Fincher and adapted by Gillian Flynn from her own best-selling novel. It’s likely to do for prenuptial agreements what The Bucket List did for, well, bucket lists. This is one of those instances of a review having … Continue reading
It’s tempting to dismiss director Wes Ball’s adaptation of James Dashner’s young adult novel as a Hunger Games knock-off, but to do so would be unfair. A breath of fresh air into what is rapidly becoming a crowded sub-genre, The Maze Runner is a slickly plot-driven flick that delivers the basic sense of adventure that is sometimes missing from its relentlessly brooding cinematic progenitor. The premise is … Continue reading
Let’s just get this out of the way first: The One I Love is a great movie to watch, but an almost impossible one to review — not because it is impenetrable or has the kind of built-in audience that doesn’t give a dingo’s kidney about critics’ opinions (it’s neither of those, by the way), … Continue reading
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