Daily Archives: January 6, 2015

Could be. It doesn’t have “Into the Woods” or “Selma” on it, but today’s PGA nominations certainly feel like the best pictures to me. There are our front-runners, “Boyhood” and “Birdman” and “Whiplash” are here.  So is “Gone Girl” (“Selma” … Continue reading →

Well, their hearts were in the right place. “Black November” is a preachy, theatrical “message” thriller about the circumstances that are turning Nigeria into a failed state. It’s a film of declarations and declamations, history lessons and oil geopolitics, a … Continue reading →

Earnest and often inspiring, “Selma” is a handsomely mounted “Eyes on the Prize” account of the defining protests of the Civil Rights Movement. Handsomely mounted and high-minded, it’s only sins are overreaching ambition and a tendency to rub the roughest … Continue reading →

Voice-over narration in the movies is a crutch, rarely used by anyone with the skill to use the visual medium to tell the story with pictures, as film was meant to do. But you can almost excuse the maddening fill-in-between-the-pictures … Continue reading →