Category: Reviews
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Draft Day (2014)
The NFL is the most popular sport in America. Almost every kind of sports movie has been made at least once. Draft Day, a 2014 Ivan Reitman movie starring Kevin Costner, is a sports movie focused on the NFL Draft and the drama that takes place during the draft, an offseason…
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Focus (2015)
Focus lost me early and never won me back because it cons the audience and think’s it’s smart because of it. And while Smith and Robbie are good, the movie is boring for long stretches.
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Still Alice (2014)
My grandfather passed away nearly two years ago after battling Parkinson’s Disease for many years. It was a disease that subtly hemmed his life in more and more around him; starting with hand tremors and slowly but surely taking more and more individual ability away from him until he was…
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Mood Indigo (2014)
Regardless of the overall quality of his films, Michel Gondry is one of the few filmmakers who has a distinct visual aesthetic to his films (The Green Hornet notwithstanding). Rising to prominence like other modern-day directors through music videos, Gondry has carved out a unique creativity in the visual style…
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Jimi: All Is By My Side (2014)
Jimi Hendrix is the greatest guitarist of all time. I remember the first time I bought a Hendrix album back during a summer home from college working at the now defunct Ames in South Portland, ME. I had just started to get into music beyond just what I heard on the…
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Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
January to March is a dark period of the calendar for theatrical releases. Aside from the Oscar contenders that go wide after getting an earlier limited release, a lot of the movies released are dumped because the studio knows they’re not that good. It’s easy to be dubious or dismissive…
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Wish I Was Here (2014)
Despite the eventual backlash, Zach Braff wrote, directed, and starred in one of the most talked about indie films of the 2000s with 2004’s Garden State. It elevated Braff to a level that most people didn’t expect given that he had very little on his resume outside of the TV show Scrubs. …
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The Theory of Everything (2014)
Stephen Hawking, the brilliant theoretical physicist betrayed by his own body and confined to a wheelchair is given the biopic treatment in director James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything. Hawking is a master in his field and the success he has achieved in the face of such physical limitations is…
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A Most Violent Year (2014)
“A man’s got to have a code, a creed to live by, no matter his job.” -John Wayne. This is a popular theme in books, television, and film. Whether a character is standing up to injustice, the system, or whatever, it’s a frequently occurring theme. Without a code, it’s easy…
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A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
In the last few years, Liam Neeson has been known for having a particular set of skills in particular sets of films. Most of these (The Taken franchise, Unknown, Non-Stop) have been run-of-the-mill action flicks, with only The Grey rising above its genre class to be somewhat thought-provoking. With A Walk…
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