This movie was rather confounding to me. I liked the first preview I saw, mainly because of the music (Wings’ “1985,” an all-time favorite of mine). Then the second preview I saw revealed an important plot point I would rather […]
Continue reading »Category: Recent Releases
Woman in Gold (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
While I respect and enjoy virtually every aspect of cinema, I have wondered just what it is that makes it so powerful. The answer, I think, is human behavior. No matter how filmmakers present their stories, how they are intertwined […]
Continue reading »Effie Gray (2015) ☆ ☆
Historical subjects as seen in movies vary in perspective due to many factors, chief among which is time. The passing of time changes opinions, positions, societal customs and fashions, and even basic facts can be reassessed. Thus, an event, or […]
Continue reading »Insurgent (2015) ☆ 1/2
The second of four planned Divergent series dystopian adventures (Allegiant will be split into two parts) suffers from the same issues as the first one, and simply isn’t very compelling. A post-apocalyptic society is divided into five factions, each of which contributes […]
Continue reading »Rear Window (1954) ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Among the greatest pleasures I have experienced while going to the movies is to see classic films of the past on the big screen. This afternoon I saw Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. I’ve seen it before in a theatre, when […]
Continue reading »The Gunman (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
Sean Penn an action movie star? Sort of, in The Gunman, where he portrays a “security expert” / hit man who finds himself in trouble eight years after one particular assignment in the Congo. It’s an international action movie, with […]
Continue reading »Red Army (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
It’s unusual for documentary features to get theatrical runs, at least around here in northern New Jersey, but Red Army is the exception. It chronicles the most famous hockey players in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and ’80s, when the […]
Continue reading »Focus (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆
While I am generally not a big fan of movies in which nothing is as it seems and nobody is who they seem to be, I do appreciate filmmaking that genuinely fools me with strong plotting, characterization and intelligence. Focus is […]
Continue reading »Run All Night (2015) ☆ ☆ 1/2
I’ve seen a lot of movies like this over the years, wherein crime syndicates are ripped apart by internal strife, questions of honor and family, and violent wrongs perpetrated by people who don’t know any other way to survive. There […]
Continue reading »Chappie (2015) ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2
There are few visionaries in science-fiction cinema, but one of them is Neill Blomkamp, the South African writer-director behind District 9, Elysium and now Chappie (and soon, the next installment of Alien, which plans to dispense with Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, […]
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