Every year brings at least one new coming-of-age story. My favorite from this year is The Way, Way Back. Plots about sexual awakening are perhaps rarer, and when they do appear, they usually focus on a male’s perspective. It’s a challenge to successfully combine the two types of films in a single experience and center […]
An awkward, socially inept 21-year-old finds out that every man in his family has an incredible special ability and sets out to make the most of it in About Time. Here we meet Tim (Domhnall Gleeson aka Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films) who, upon turning 21, is told by his father (Bill Nighy) the extraordinary […]
Slavery has been addressed by so many movies and television shows over the years. Many of those stories have their origin in books, as in Roots, while others are entirely fictional and original, as in the recent Django Unchained. It’s rare for a seemingly new story to be unearthed and adapted into a movie. Such […]
A free black man from New York is kidnapped and sold into slavery in 12 Years a Slave. Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an avid violinist, is living with his wife and young children in 1841 when he’s offered a compelling musical opportunity in Washington, DC. Eager for any chance to better their position in life, […]
A senior yachtsman, sailing solo across an unforgiving ocean, comes face to face with his own mortality when trouble strikes his lonely boat in All Is Lost. Robert Redford plays an unnamed solo seafarer who pilots a 39-foot yacht across the Indian Ocean. He awakens one morning to find the ship damaged by a collision […]
Remakes of classic films are usually not worth the price of admission. I am constantly annoyed about how rampant unoriginality is in Hollywood. Why create something new and exciting when there are decades of movies to remake or reinterpret? That attitude has produced a litany of bad remakes. Carrie does not quite qualify as that […]
A shy teen struggles with callous classmates and an overprotective mother until she taps into a unique — but dangerous — ability in Carrie. This is a remake of the classic 1976 horror film based on Stephen King‘s best-selling book of the same name. The story centers on social misfit Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz), who […]
In recent months, Benedict Cumberbatch has taken on two iconic characters. In one movie, he plays an arrogant, creepy, powerful man with superhuman abilities, a deliberate way of speaking and an unusual look who wants to expose the lies of leaders in order to benefit his people and ultimately ends up confined to minimal living quarters […]
An outcast rogue hacker turns his skills to exposing the world’s biggest corporate and political secrets, ushering in a new era of information freedom in The Fifth Estate. This is the true-life story detailing the origins of one of the most powerful grassroots organizations the world has ever seen — WikiLeaks — and its founder, the quirky, […]
An American cargo ship is boarded by Somali pirates who take its captain hostage in the true-life tale of Captain Phillips. In April of 2009, the Maersk Alabama set sail from Oman, Jordan, with 17,000 metric tons of cargo bound for Mombasa, Kenya. Their route took them directly through an area where Somali pirates had been known […]
One of the worst three-day periods in the history of our country is recounted when a local hospital gets the unbelievable call to treat a mortally wounded president in Parkland. A part of our country died along with a fallen president in November of 1963. It left an indelible mark on our history and anyone […]
When I first heard about Gravity, I joked about it and thought that it could never work. An entire movie of Sandra Bullock and George Clooney floating around in space?! No way! Would it be a disaster or a triumph? As I always do, I withhold judgment until I actually see a movie — no matter how […]