Whiplash | Director Damien Chazelle | Score: 8.3 I had a conversation about this film before I got to see it with a friend of mine who couldn’t understand how a movie about a gifted student in a prestigious music…
A Place at the Table | Directors Kristi Jacobson & Lori Silverbush | Score: 6.3 If you’re feeling up to it, you could pretty effectively encapsulate the neglect this country heaps on its children via a punishing double-feature of societal…
Midnight Special | Director Jeff Nichols | Score: 5.7 Every parent wants to think of their children as unique and special from everyone else – wants to feel that their child has gifts no one else has. Jeff Nichols’ film…
In the Heart of the Sea | Director Ron Howard | Score: 3.5 The worst thing to ever happen to Ron Howard as a director was winning an Oscar for the dunderheaded A Beautiful Mind. Up until that point, he…
Triple 9 | Director John Hillcoat | Score: 4.4 In John Hillcoat’s bloody, bad-cop thriller, Woody Harrelson plays a carousing, boozy, reckless-driving detective named Jeffery Allen. He’s so twisty and chill he digs out a half-smoked roach out of an…
The year started with a very strong Sundance line-up (which screened three of my top-five films), continued with some exceptional docs unveiled at True/False, rose up again for a strong Cannes bill, and some particularly memorable turns at TIFF. This…
Suffragette | Director Sarah Gavron | Score: 6.5 I know what you’re thinking. We’re creeping up on awards time, and here’s a British flick with a big name, bullet-proof cast (Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Brendan Gleeson, and Meryl-freaking-Streep), covering…
Room | Director Lenny Abrahamson | Score: 6.2 It always seems like a good idea to write an adult novel from the perspective of a child right up until you hit that first roadblock of language and nuance, and you…
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. | Director Guy Ritchie | Score: 6.2 It might not have been a groundbreaking show in many respects, but the original “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” (and typesetters, I apologize in advance for having to make you…
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) | Director Alejandro González Iñárritu | Score: 7.7 When filmmakers make movies about theater, its generally to deconstruct the inherent artifice in the form, taking the audience backstage with gloomy actors peering into grungy…
