Wow! 2014 was a really great year for movies! So many films this year were easy to love, with rich character studies that tackled unique situations. 2013 may have been more stylistically diverse, but 2014 finds many of our great directors at the very top of their game, creating complete and thoughtful movies that would…
This was kind of a strange year for gaming. After the barn burner year of 2013, it seems that those who had mastered narrative and gameplay had retreated. Levine liquified the Bioshock team in a bizarre move and with the console generations shifting many big names have been quiet. In their place, sequels and skinner…
Music had a pretty good year in 2014. Although there weren’t any behemoth releases, the field was much wider than last year. Of course this only really counts my tiny rock corner of the universe, but word on the street is rock isn’t quite dead yet. Even if no album this year is an instant…
2014 is officially kaput, so we’re back with another year’s end reminiscence. Television is a tough beast due to its fire-hose nature. If you take just the last three months, almost 50 new shows have premiered and have ratings on Metacritic. Now 50 new movies would be a lot of get through, but if we…
Interstellar is the latest from Christopher Nolan, a planet hopping film tied together with relationships. Some of the clumsiness of the Dark Knight trilogy exists here to suggest Nolan hasn’t quite mastered people, but as promised Interstellar will take you to new worlds and show you spectacles never before seen. Interstellar contains several great set…
Nightcrawler is a portrait of modern society that comes from first time director David Goyer. Several reviews have focused on the role that television news plays in the events of the film, but television news is irrelevant these days and “if it bleeds it leads” is a truism that’s post-evisceration thanks to films like Network.…
Many movies have explored fame, but few really consider greatness. Fame is sort of an ancillary condition, a lucky consequence of timing. Greatness however comes from pushing yourself and your skills beyond previous limits. Usually when it comes to skill movies either preach the discovery of happiness via realigned expectations, such as in the excellent…
The Trip was on odd film, a travel film that brought the audience closer to the characters due to their constant loquacious attempts to keep everyone at a distance. Although much of the comedic film was improvised, room was left alongside the epicurean delights for squirmy feelings of loneliness and misgivings. The sequel, the Trip…
Calvary is the new Brendan Gleeson vehicle from John McDonagh. Independent cinema makes it possible to write “Brendan Gleeson vehicle,” a state of affairs that allows us to enjoy the acting chops of the rudy Irish gentleman outside of the usual supporting roles for burly foreigners. Another delight of independent cinema is watching the McDonagh…
Guardians of the Galaxy is the story of a scrappy underdog trying his best to maintain his way of life in the face of an evil empire. I am talking, of course, about director James Gunn and his newfound employment with the Walt Disney Corporation, an intergalactic entity that now owns the rights to both…
The Texas pastoral Boyhood is a new film from Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise), notable not for its subject matter but for how it was made. Or, more accurately, when it was made. Shot over 12 years, Boyhood captures the decade long adolescence of a young boy, along with his sister and parents,…
The latest film from Bong Joon-ho arrives with a very strange staggered release schedule, indicative of the reported tension between Bong and the Weinsteins. However the film has finally arrived on US shores, which is cause for celebration. Bong is the notable director of some of the best Korean films in recent years (Mother, Memories…
