Before Midnight | Director Richard Linklater | Score: 7.5 I was a callow twenty-something in my second year of grad school when , the first film of this wandering couple trilogy began back in 1995. I remember seeing it somewhere…
What Maisie Knew | Directors Scott McGehee & David Siegel | Score: 6.7 Some timeless literary works are, in fact, not so timeless. And they can be extremely difficult to re-imagine for a modern world (the scandalous events of The…
Kon Tiki | Directors Joachim Rønning & Espen Sandberg | Score: 6.8 It’s become increasingly apparent that reality shows have spoiled our sense of true adventure. Watching gaggles of idiotic D-list celebrities and aspiring wanna-be’s parading about on remote islands…
At Any Price | Director Ramin Bahrani | Score: 4.7 If you see wide swaths of cornstalks in a Hollywood movie, chances are you’re either watching yet another Superman reboot (Man of Steel opens June 14!), or you’re seeing farmland…
Star Trek Into Darkness | Director J.J. Abrams | Score: 5.5 J.J. Abrams is a man who clearly understands the important beats and movements of a well-timed action flick, the ways to set up his audience for the big finish…
To The Wonder | Director Terrence Malick | Score: 4.0 It seems as if no filmmaker in history has spent more time in the woods than Terrence Malick. His films evoke the crosscurrent of nature and its interaction with mankind…
Jurassic Park: 3D | Director Steven Spielberg | Score: 4.9 As odious as the concept might be to film purists, it’s very difficult not to compare Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film to his previous monster masterwork, Jaws, from 1975. Difficult because…
The Sapphires | Director Wayne Blair | Score: 5.5 If movies about music and musicians can be said to have one particular recurring trope, it’s that they far too often require the soundtrack to power them through every obstacle in…
Beyond the Hills | Directoy Cristian Mungiu | Score: 8.5 Filmgoers lucky enough to have seen the brilliant 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days might well have wondered about the film’s out-of-nowhere wunderkind Romanian writer/director Cristian Mungiu, and just…
On the Road | Director Walter Salles | Score: 5.2 It’s not that I’m entirely unsympathetic to director Wallter Salles and screenwriter Jose Rivera and their largely ineffectual adaptation of the Jack Kerouac beat manifesto. In much the same way…
