Emotions lie at the heart of every moviegoing experience. If a movie makes you feel nothing, then the filmmakers didn’t do their job right. Most narrative films make you laugh or exhilarate you with drama or action. Documentaries are a different breed entirely. More often than not, they bring out the anger that’s inside you […]
I had a great time on spring break in Fort Lauderdale back when college kids could get away with almost anything. Ultimately, we never did much damage and certainly didn’t harm the residents. We pretty much stayed to our area of the resort and the tourist bars that were all decked out for spring break. […]
Most movies that have some basis in fact twist the history a little for more dramatic effect or simply to make a more enjoyable experience. For historical dramas, this technique tends to misinform moviegoers who don’t already know the real history. Imagine how many people will now think of Abraham Lincoln as represented in Lincoln […]
Tom Cruise stars as a futuristic maintenance man helping to clean up Earth after a devastating war in Oblivion. The year’s 2077 and Earth is a vast wasteland of destruction after an alien race attempted to take it over but ultimately failed. The final battle involved the fateful decision to nuke virtually every square inch […]
I must confess that I’m a huge magic fan. From an early age, I wanted to be a magician, and I was lucky enough to meet Harry Blackstone Jr. backstage when I was at the height of my interest and skills. Over time, I continued to see magic shows as they came through town. I […]
Anthology films win or lose based on the wide variety of the segments and the expectation that there will be some real gems in with the inevitable duds. If you watch such a film with those assumptions in mind, you probably won’t be disappointed. I’m a huge horror fan, so when I heard the title […]
Every now and then, it’s nice to have a sunny movie in which a main character is blind to the reality of his life and just sticks to his dreams. There’s nothing wrong with a little intentional avoidance of the real life to strive for the imagined life. This Felliniesque mix of dreams and reality […]
Enough years have passed since the ‘60s and ‘70s that many of the radicals, war protesters and antiestablishment groups have mellowed out, grown up or simply lost their drive. The members of the Weather Underground were more extreme in their actions and motivations in that they committed acts of violence and vandalism that would be […]
Emotional remnants are the sign of an impactful film. How many times have you left a theater and forgot most of a movie by the time you make it to a bar or restaurant? Could you say the same for a film like Schindler’s List? Love it or hate it, that Steven Spielberg drama left […]
Three seemingly unrelated families struggle to deal with basic human interaction and empathy as a result of technology that seems intent to push us all further apart in Disconnect. The latest film from director Henry Alex Rubin (Murderball) focuses on social media and its direct impact on the lives of people very much like the […]
There’s nothing wrong with a slowly paced film as long as it builds to something exciting or dramatic at the end. There are many examples of films that reveal information in dribs and drabs over the course of their plots, and it turns out that the slow approach is the way to go with these […]
James McAvoy stars as a cash-strapped art auctioneer who pulls off a stunning heist of a top painting only to forget where he stashed it in the new Danny Boyle film, Trance. McAvoy’s character, Simon, works at a high-end auction firm and knows the complexities involved in trying to make off with a priceless painting. […]