HOW THE WEST WAS WON (MORE OR LESS). It was going to be the Coen brothers’ first collaboration with Netflix, a project that started out as a TV series. In the end, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs turned into a feature, their first digitally shot Western. I had no idea what to expect. It had … Continue reading Ballad of Buster Scruggs: The Wild, Wild West
IT TAKES A BEAR TO CATCH A THIEF. Paddington the bear has created a nice life for himself with the Brown family, but everything changes the day he is accused of having stolen a peculiar pop-up book of London sights…. A sequel that does everything right and maintains the same cheerful, kind and funny spirit … Continue reading Paddington 2
THE AMERICAN DREAM HAS A PRICE. In 1926, WWI veteran Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck), who’s fallen in love with the mistress (Sienna Miller) of a gangster, becomes involved in the battle between two crime families, one Irish and one Italian. Affleck’s adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, the second part in a series of books about … Continue reading Live by Night
EXPERIENCE THE TRUE ENCOUNTER THAT INSPIRED THE MYTH MOBY DICK. In 1850, author Herman Melville (Ben Wishaw) hears the story of how the whaling ship Essex encountered a huge, aggressive albino sperm whale thirty years earlier and was sunk. The real-life drama that inspired the great American classic ”Moby-Dick” doesn’t live up to its epic … Continue reading In the Heart of the Sea
THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN STOP A SERIAL KILLER IS THE MAN WHO INSPIRED HIM. Baltimore, 1849; police detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) realizes that several murders are being done exactly the same way as in Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack) stories, and asks the down-on-his-luck writer for help. A historic horror-thriller from the director … Continue reading The Raven
MOTHERS. DAUGHTERS. REBELS. One day in 1912, East End laundress Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) accidentally finds herself in a suffragette riot and becomes drawn into an increasingly more violent struggle for women’s rights. After portraying a Conservative icon in The Iron Lady (2011), writer Abi Morgan took on the suffragette movement and showed the consequences … Continue reading Suffragette
IT’S A PLUNDERFUL LIFE. An unsuccessful pirate captain and his crew capture Charles Darwin who talks them into sailing to London for a contest that has a valuable prize… but Queen Victoria has threatened to execute every pirate. Another fabulous Aardman movie, this time in 3D, with a smooth blend of stop-motion clay and computer … Continue reading The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists
GET READY TO GET NAUGHTY! In an attempt to save his magic powers, Gargamel (Hank Azaria) plans to use Smurfette to lay his hands on a secret formula for creating Smurfs. A sequel made in the same style as the original, with many of the same cast members returning. Whatever charm the first film had … Continue reading The Smurfs 2
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is told in confessional by a parishioner that he will be killed next Sunday as a sort of sacrifice; the parishioner was abused as a child by another priest. The director reunited with Gleeson after The Guard (2011) for another film that takes rich advantage of its Irish atmosphere. This one … Continue reading Calvary
THE COURAGE TO FACE FEAR. As the story goes, American writer Randall Wallace made a trip to Scotland and came upon a statue at the entrance of Edinburgh Castle. Since the statue bore the name of Wallace, the writer was intrigued. This was not a relative, but William Wallace, the great Scottish war hero. Having … Continue reading Braveheart: Not a History Lesson
LIVE. DIE. REPEAT. In the future, humanity is battling a fierce alien race that originally attacked Germany; former ad man William Cage (Tom Cruise) finds himself at the front reliving the same scenario over and over. Another sci-fi flick for Cruise after Oblivion (2013), this time an action adventure in 3D that looks like a … Continue reading Edge of Tomorrow
After the arrest of a former Weather Underground activist (Susan Sarandon) who’d been a fugitive for the last 30 years, reporter Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf) turns his attention to a seemingly honest Albany lawyer (Robert Redford). The 1970s terror organization is portrayed in rather simple fashion as consisting of essentially decent people who made undeniable … Continue reading The Company You Keep
SOMETIMES LOVE IS THE ONLY PROOF YOU NEED. During the Croatian War of Independence in 1991, American war correspondent Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn) is assumed to have been killed, but his wife (Andie MacDowell) refuses to believe it and goes looking for him. Mixed reviews for this intense drama that boasts fine performances and horrifying … Continue reading Harrison’s Flowers
