Monthly Archives: January 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 →

He’s made a trilogy of films covering the long course of a college-age romance, love the second time around and a marriage that may or may not endure the later, bitter years. And then there’s “Boyhood,” in which Ethan Hawke … Continue reading →

“The Better Angels” is an arty, poetic rendering of Abraham Lincoln’s youth of hardscrabble farming, near poverty and tragedy, the childhood, in essence, that made the man. It’s about the parents who raised him, the stern, hard-working father Tom (Jason … Continue reading →

“Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death” earned poor reviews, has no stars anyone recognizes outside of their immediate family, but being the first horror movie in some weeks and being the only fresh film to go into wide release … Continue reading →

Lots of sequels, too many comic book movies, studio movie slates aimed at a young, distracted, willing-to-stream-it-at-home audience, the lack of a must-see-in-theaters blockbuster or two, or three or four — all worked against movie going in theaters this past … Continue reading →

One the of more established guilds, American Cinema Editors, have released their nominees for best edited films and TV series. And the 65th Eddies have a few surprise inclusions and omissions. Among the ten dramatic and musical/comedy nominees, you’ll see … Continue reading →

The first wide release of 2015 is a deathly dull affair, a pointless, passionless ghost story sequel that lacks the one big thing the original film’s star provided — empathy. There’s no Daniel Radcliffe in “Woman in Black 2: Angel … Continue reading →