A desperate, wanted man compels a single mother and her son to give him shelter in Labor Day. When I was young, I wrote a detailed book report on the curious, true-life story of Patty Hearst. In 1974, the 19-year-old granddaughter of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst was kidnapped from her apartment and held for […]
This year’s collection of animated shorts is a mixed bag because it includes two shorts that people have already seen as lead-ins to Disney feature films and the others are not as strong as in years past. There’s a clear favorite in The Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014: Animation that people will latch onto, but […]
Three unenlightened best friends find it challenging to keep their vow to avoid a serious romantic relationship in That Awkward Moment. When one of their friends finds out that his storybook marriage is over, the three agree on a pact to swear off all serious romantic relationships. Casual sex is the order of the day, but […]
A sly but well-meaning insurance salesman is spellbound by his attraction for the calculating wife of one of his clients in Double Indemnity. This classic film from 1944 is one of the 10 films that famed movie critic Roger Ebert asked me to watch as part of a discussion on the differences between various types […]
An Iranian husband returns to France and his estranged wife to finalize their divorce in The Past. Marie Brisson (Bérénice Bejo) and her husband Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) parted ways a few years back, leaving Marie to raise her two daughters (from a previous marriage) alone. Ahmad returns to France and Marie to check in on […]
If you keep an eye out for viral videos, you probably saw the “devil baby” video that made the rounds this past week. It was a clever and hilarious promotional prank for the new film Devil’s Due. They put an animatronic baby that looks possessed or demonic in a remote-controlled carriage and rolled it around […]
Charles Dickens romances a young, would-be actress who becomes his last great love in The Invisible Woman. In the second half of the 19th Century, Charles Dickens (Ralph Fiennes) was the toast of England (and the world) as its most successful living author. For all the good his fame brought, what it couldn’t elevate was […]
A tactical mission in Afghanistan to eliminate a top Taliban target goes awry in Lone Survivor. On June 11, 1963, a Vietnamese monk sat down at a busy Saigon intersection and chose to be burned alive as a protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. The monk sat motionless while he […]
A lonely introvert finds comfort in the “arms” of his new, highly-advanced cell phone operating system in Her. Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is demoralized by the breakup of his marriage to his first love, Catherine (Rooney Mara). It doesn’t help matters that his job as a creative letter writer requires him to be fully in […]
A dysfunctional family gathers together in a time of need, only to find more challenges than answers, in August: Osage County. Many years ago, my grandfather shared with me a key piece of wisdom that, I’m embarrassed to say, I learned far later than I should have. I’d been struggling with some family dynamics, and […]
The only thing worse than a found-footage movie is a sequel to a found-footage movie that strays from the formula that defined the others. It didn’t work with Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, and it certainly fails with Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. For better or worse, the previous four films in this series […]
A highly motivated stockbroker rises from neophyte to Nero in The Wolf of Wall Street. With all the more recent news about Wall Street excess, it’s sometimes easy to forget the myriad of scandals that came before. In the ’80s and ’90s, we had crooks like Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and, of course, the folks […]