Bear-Man, Or The Expected Tragedies Of Awards Season: ‘Son Of Saul’ & ‘The Revenant’

(Plenty of spoilers in this review… though you’ve probably heard most of them already.) Here’s a fun game of “Would You Rather?”:

Top Ten Films: 2015

“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.”

‘Hateful’ Dead: The Eighth-Best Film By Quentin Tarantino

I’m not a total Tarantino fanboy, because I’m not generally a fan of any filmmaker who keeps making different variations of the same movie. (I have this problem with Wes Anderson, too.) Some people just love a particular filmmaker’s obsessive patterns, and love returning to that same formula again and again. I don’t. After a […]

Six Virgins, One Suicide: Coming Of Age In Turkey & ‘Brooklyn’

America is a land of opportunity, beckoning thousands across the globe to come to these shores in celebration of freedom and liberty. If you’re a cute white girl from Ireland, at least.

‘Force’ Majeur: Abrams Awakens A Flatlined Franchise

Recently, in this galaxy, I saw a film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I bet you did too. The film has already grossed a predictably record-shattering $240(ish) million in the United States, and more than twice that worldwide. The internet and all media and every single human person on the planet are abuzz […]

Gun ‘Chi’: Spike Lee’s Rhyming Tragicomic Sex Farce Targets Gun Violence

Now that Mad Men is over, we’re seeing its star players pop up as supporting players all over the place — mostly (surprise, surprise) in the workplace. Elisabeth Moss was part of the team of duped journalists in Truth, John Slattery helped highlight the Catholic church’s crimes in Spotlight, and Jessica Pare showed Saorise Ronan […]

Orphan ‘White’: A Self-Centered City Boy’s Rude Awakening

This is neither the first nor the last time I’ll discuss awards season in relation to a movie that has maybe a 5% chance of nabbing an Oscar nomination. Every year, there are those surefire heavyweights — this year, films like Spotlight, The Revenant, and Room (to name a few) — and then there are […]

‘Jobs’ & ‘Homes’: Politics, Technology & Economy In America’s Recent Past

Whether you’re a fan of former president George W. Bush or not, you have to admit his term contained some profound low points, kicking off with 9/11 and ending in a nasty recession. You may or may not blame Bush himself for these and other pieces of unfortunate Americana in the 21st century, but let’s […]

Border Line: International Relations Get Tense In ‘Bridge Of Spies’ & ‘Sicario’

We’ve heard many times that the so-called “War on Drugs” really is an actual war. Traffic, a Best Picture nominee from way back in 2000, remains the cinematic authority on the topic, and probably had more influence on the aesthetic of modern movies than almost any other film. Nowadays, plenty of dramas and thriller look […]

Boy Meets World: Mother And Child Escape A ‘Room’ Without A View

Many of us have had the experience of returning to a place we know from childhood. A place that once served as the stage for everything we knew, and suddenly, looks very small. Room stars Brie Larson as a woman we know only as “Ma” in the first act of this movie, because that’s the […]

Intelligent Life: Science Rules In ‘The Martian’

The Martian shouldn’t feel like such a treasure, and maybe twenty years ago, it wouldn’t have. Its closest cousin, Apollo 13, was nominated for Best Picture in 1995, back when feel-good movies could still dominate both the box office and awards season — which is not to say that they always did, but feel-good guys […]

‘Walk’ & Talk: Zemeckis (Almost) Pulls Off An Overly Chatty High-Wire Heist

It seems exactly enough time has passed to allow for a film that prominently features New York City’s fallen World Trade Center without any explicit reference to September 11. Though Joseph Gordon-Levitt has top billing, The Walk really belongs to two much bigger stars — the Twin Towers themselves, brought back from the dead in […]