Still Alice
The reason to see Still Alice, and you really should, is Julianne Moore. She just won an Academy Award for her beautiful and heartbreaking performance as Alice Howland, a successful…
Kingsman: The Secret Service
Sitting in the theater watching Kingsman: The Secret Service, I was in front of an older couple who talked through the film, at one point declaring, "This is the worst…
A Most Violent Year
Writer/director J. C. Chandor knows how to keep an audience glued to their seats. With his first film, Margin Call, he had us wondering until the final scene whether a…
The Duke of Burgundy
This is definitely not a film for everyone. It is a very arty, beautifully shot story of a lesbian couple who enjoy a rich dominant/submissive sex life. But it is…
American Sniper
War is hell. So is this intensely polarizing movie. You either love American Sniper or hate it. I was one of the latter. Adapted from a biography of the same…
Inherent Vice
I have liked Paul Thomas Anderson's films a lot in the past (Magnolia, Boogie Nights, There Will be Blood), and Inherent Vice has a lot of the elements he is…
The Interview
If you have a adolescent nephew, this is the perfect flick to share. It is full of dumb laughs and mostly harmless hijinks (unless you happen to be Kim Jong-un.)…
Force Majeure
There is a lot of buzz around Force Majeure, a Swedish relationship drama. They LOVED it at Cannes, it is Sweden's Oscar entry, and the Foreign Press has just nominated…
Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
As a photography major in college, I studied all the "famous" photographers and their "important" images. But what we did not see were photographers of color and their important images.…
Citizenfour
In January of 2013, filmmaker Laura Poitras began receiving emails from a mysterious person who only identified himself as "citizenfour" and who had information about US government surveillance on a…
The Theory of Everything
The Theory of Everything is an unusual love story. It is adapted from the autobiography of Jane Wilde, physicist Stephen Hawking's first wife, who met him while he was working…
Rosewater
Jon Stewart's crossover from host of a hit satirical news show to feature film writer/director was slightly surprising on the face of it. But once you get into Rosewater, you…
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
Birdman has no competition, because there is nothing remotely like it out there. It is a semi-fantasy, dark comedy with an amazing cast and a highly imaginative script. Michael Keaton…
John Wick
The moral of John Wick is never ever kill someone's dog, probably a good thing to bear in mind anyway. In the case of this film, the perpetrators of the…
St. Vincent
St. Vincent is a surprisingly feel good flick, and a great deal of that is due the performance of Bill Murray, who has followed his early comedy career with some…