Carol
The story is simple. Carol details a relationship in the 1950s. In this case, between Carol Aird, an elegant society woman who resides in the upscale suburbs of New Jersey and a struggling young salesgirl named Therese Belivet who works in a Manhattan department store. Carol is going through a difficult divorce while trying to […]
The Good Dinosaur
It would be easy to dismiss The Good Dinosaur‘s simple narrative as minor Pixar. The tale’s themes touch upon the importance of family and finding your place in this world. These lessons have certainly been done before. But delve deeper and what the studio has done here is no less magical than some of their […]
Creed
Before this picture, the need for another “Rocky” movie was right up there with the urgency for another Friday the 13th installment. Creed is the latest entry in the franchise following 2006’s Rocky Balboa. The series stopped using numbers after Rocky V because well it’s more classy I suppose. This is the first Rocky movie […]
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Splitting author Suzanne Collins’ third and final book into two parts was a decision motivated by greed. The choice may have made stockholders happy, but it certainly didn’t benefit the art of telling an interesting story. Mockingjay Part 1 relied on exposition to set up a civil war that was brewing. The subject continues in […]
Brooklyn
Movies concerning the cultural assimilation of an immigrant into American life are rare. Nostalgic period pieces about the experience are rarer still. Into this atmosphere comes Brooklyn. In stark contrast to the current zeitgeist, it’s like a invigorating breath of positive air. That’s not to say her new country is a bed of roses. However […]
Spotlight
The difference between when a story explodes in the media and the time it actually happens, can be two totally different things. Just ask Bill Cosby. Such is the case with the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. On January 6, 2002 the Boston Globe ran the first of many reports detailing […]
The Peanuts Movie
The Peanuts characters have been animated before, but never quite like this. Charles Schultz’ creations debuted as a comic strip way back in 1950 and ran for 50 years until 2000. It continued on in reruns. During those years Peanuts expanded on its success with television specials. A Charlie Brown Christmas and It’s the Great […]
Spectre
Daniel Craig is back for his 4th appearance in the Bond series. For those keeping score, Spectre is the 24th entry made by Eon Productions. The greatest James Bond features have always worked as a cohesive whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. To put it another way, they are an assortment […]
Legend
It’s 2 Tom Hardys for the price of 1. That should be the tagline of Legend, the new biopic about the Krays from American director Brian Helgeland (A Knight’s Tale, 42). He also adapts the screenplay from John Pearson’s 1972 book The Profession of Violence. Twin brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray were two of London’s most […]
Beasts of No Nation
War is hell. The idea has been promoted before and here it is presented once again. This time through a series harrowing images that remain in the mind’s eye well after this combat film is over. The tale concerns Agu (Abraham Attah), a young West African boy affected by an unnamed civil war raging in […]