Two old friends are paid to reunite for an Italian restaurant tour in The Trip to Italy. In 2010, comedian Steve Coogan (playing himself) took on an assignment to tour a number of restaurants in northern England. When his chosen compatriot for the trip backed out, Coogan reluctantly agreed to bring along fellow comedian and tenuous […]
A high school football coach must refocus his young team’s priorities after its highly-regarded winning streak comes to an end in When the Game Stands Tall. De La Salle’s high school football coach, Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel), was the man behind the legendary winning streak of 151 games, spanning 13 years and 12 flawless seasons. As […]
A sudden, potentially fatal accident gives a hopeful classical musician a unique new perspective on life in If I Stay. Mia Hall (Chloë Grace Moretz) grew up as the black sheep in her musical family. Both of her parents were huge fans of classic rock. Her father, Denny (Joshua Leonard), was a member of a well-respected local rock […]
A young, would-be musician is asked to perform for an offbeat band whose eccentric singer stays hidden behind a fake head in Frank. Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is your typical twentysomething who spends his days in a thankless, dead-end office job waiting for his big moment to arrive. The dream is to one day become a successful […]
A young, aspiring Indian cook hopes to one day fulfill his mother’s dreams by becoming a great chef in The Hundred-Foot Journey. Hassan Haji (Manish Dayal) grew up surrounded by the aromatic ambiance provided by his family’s well-regarded Indian restaurant. His lifelong fascination with food came directly from his mother. She spent many long evenings […]
An Irish priest taking confessions is mortally threatened by one of his parishioners in Calvary. Every Sunday brings a litany of never-ending sins confessed to the local priest by his flock of imperfect penitents. Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) has heard it all over the years, but this session is different. The ominous male voice coming from […]
A molecular biologist searches for the answer to a genetic mystery that challenges everything we know about life in I Origins. Geeky graduate student Ian Gray (Michael Pitt) is fascinated by the human eye. Each one is a work of art unique to its host and no one else. His research, not surprisingly, revolves around the […]
A German intelligence officer searches for a Chechen immigrant whom he’s certain will lead him to a deeper terrorist network in A Most Wanted Man. The world’s intelligence communities are dominated by both reality and paranoia concerning future potential terrorist actions. Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) heads up a secret anti-terrorism unit in Hamburg. His main task […]
An obnoxious semiretired realtor has to take new stock of his life when his son unveils a big surprise in And So It Goes. Smarmy but successful businessman Oren Little (Michael Douglas) is looking for one more major real estate deal before he calls it quits. He represents a property with a listing price of $8 […]
Two children and their divorced parents weather the changes of life over a 12-year period in Boyhood. Six-year-old Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) and his eight-year-old sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater) live in a simple Texas home with their single, blue-collar mother Olivia (Patricia Arquette). She decides to move the family to Houston for a better paying job and […]
Whenever I think of “talking monkeys,” I immediately call to mind the 1995 movie The Prophecy in which Christopher Walken and Viggo Mortensen used that term to disparagingly refer to human beings. (I often find that stupid or annoying people whom I encounter are no better than talking monkeys.) This term takes on an entirely […]
As humanity struggles for survival, simians take the first steps toward dominance in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. It’s 10 years after mankind infected itself with a fatal virus that was initially designed as a wonder drug for all manner of brain disorders. Instead, it quickly spread across the globe, taking humans to the brink of extinction. Now, […]