Love Actually

Perhaps there is no better way to start a movie than with Bill Nighy singing and strutting about to a terrible cover of the sub-par song "Love Is All Around." Here, Nighy is Billy Mack, an aging rock star who likes to poke fun at his manager (Gregory Fisher) and still engage in naughty activities. Nighy...

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Wadjda

Haifa al-Monsour's "Wadjda," the first Saudi film to be sent to the Academy Awards for consideration, is an absolutely terrific film. There is quite literally no other film like it. It's filled with terrific performances, like first-time actress Waad Mohammed, who should be considered for an Oscar nomination. She and her fellow young actors put in better performances than most Hollywood adult actors. Mohammed...

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The Joy Luck Club

We've been hearing a lot of nostalgia regarding 1993 in film. This year's "12 Years A Slave" is the new "Schindler's List." A.A. Dowd wrote a brilliant article on the visual effects of "Jurassic Park" and the terrible attempts of later films to recreate the visual magic. Perhaps the likely candidacy...

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Blackfish

"And God created great whales." -Genesis The whale ate the trainer? This is one of the several responses we hear from 9-1-1 dispatchers in the opening moments. That's a fairly disturbing incident to comprehend. But it's not too far later when we go to James Earl Jones, using his powerful voice...

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Lee Daniels' The Butler

Hollywood has a sad history of dumbing-down movies about race (think of how the Oscars have rewarded movies like "Driving Miss Daisy" instead of "Do the Right Thing"). With one glance at "Lee Daniels' The Butler," you might think this is the case. Instead, we have a film that more or less plays it safe, but ultimately provides a compelling and moving story of bravery and the art of challenging the...

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The Conjuring

"No animal had ever made such sounds. Neither the lions of East Africa nor the angry bulls. At times, it sounded like a veritable herd of wild beasts orchestrated by Satan had formed a hellish choir." This quote is from a nun describing the horrible nature of a young South African girl named Clara Germana Cele, who was reportedly possessed by a demon in 1906. When thinking of this summer's "The Conjuring,"...

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Yeah, Mr. White! Yeah, Season Five!

In attempting to write an article about "Breaking Bad" as a whole, it is much simpler for me to focus on the show's characters. This is especially so because "Breaking Bad" is a show that understands that there are no small roles. I am not exaggerating when I say that there has not been a single character in this series that hasn't been fascinating. Consider one of show's most intriguing characters,...

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The Heat

"The Heat" embraces a shock-and-awe style of comedy. Melissa McCarthy shows up early in the film loud and proud (and destructive). She is Agent Mullins, a neighborhood cop who is not afraid to sacrifice sugar for the stick, even to the point of throwing phone books at prisoners. I must confess I was terribly annoyed at first. I'm a fan of the f-word and think it's funny, and it can be concluded...

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This Is the End

"This Is the End" is a parody of disaster/horror/apocalypse films in the sense that there is sort of a formula here to be poked fun at. A group of people are stranded when the world is ending and they have to use their talents and abilities to overcome the uniquely challenging environments.  But with "This Is the End," the apocalypse is in LA, the group of people are spoiled Hollywood actors,...

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The Place Beyond the Pines

"It is the business of the malevolent man to seek to promote what is beneficial to the world and to eliminate what is harmful, and to provide a model for the world.  What benefits he will carry out; what does not benefit men he will leave alone." -Mozi Over the pine planes, in Schenectady, New York, is where this story takes place. Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper) is a beat cop and the son...

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It's Time for Plan B

In my last two articles about the environment, I argued that there has been some promising news in the environmental front. Indeed there has. The United States has, shockingly, reduced its emissions by about 3 percent, on track to meet our goal of a 17 percent reduction (and faster than any other developed nation), thanks largely to the expanded use of natural gas (and the fall of oil and coal in...

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Man of Steel

It is puzzling. How can I like the emotion of a film so much and yet be so annoyed by its visuals? How can interesting characters surrender to gratuitous special effects? Such is the case with Zack Snyder's "Man of Steel," the newest franchise reboot, this time about, of course, Superman. This is the seventeen-hundredth film I've seen, and I wish I could have left the theater with a bit more excitement....

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The Funniest AFI Moments

This Saturday, TNT will present the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award to Mel Brooks, a man who certainly deserves it. For more than fifty years, he has made us practically cry laughing with films like "The Producers" in 1968 (along with the Broadway version and 2005 film version),...

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Now You See Me

In college, I was assigned a story to review a magic act taking place at Kent State, the school I attended. The act featured a man named Joshua Seth, a hypnotist who showed us in the audience a video of a young girl whose phobia of dental procedures was eradicated through Seth's hypnotism. Seth, I wrote, entered the stage as if he were a rock star, then proceeded to hypnotize almost twenty students....

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Blaming Superman: Our Gun Problem Is Caused by Guns, Not Movies

"AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes." -"Jackie Brown" Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" is undoubtedly controversial, mostly because of its repeated use of the N-word (don't discuss it with Samuel...

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All These Scandals Means...Another Four More Years?

Republicans must be really excited these days. The Obama administration is engulfed in three "scandals" (none of which can be directly linked to the President himself). Regardless, they see blood and they are thirsty. 2016 is bound to return the White House to Republican hands. For one, as mentioned,...

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