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Grierson & Leitch's 2014 In Review: The Year's Best Movie Scenes
Yes, most people have already written their Top 10 movie lists for 2014. We're saving ours for the last week of the year, but while we wait for this full, rich, and weird movie year to end, we're going to start looking back at certain highlights. Today, it's our favorite individual scenes. Tomor...
A Way-Too-Serious Man: <i>Unbroken</i>, Reviewed
According to Unbroken, director Angelina Jolie's adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand's 2010 nonfiction bestseller, Louis Zamperini had one hell of a life—so momentous, in fact, that it would make a great movie. Turns out, that ends up being part of the problem. Child delinquent, Olympic champion, ...
Sony Totally Caved On <i>The Interview</i>, And Now We're All Screwed
Monday night, Seth Rogen was a guest during the final week of The Colbert Report. Ordinarily, he isn't much of a "get," in talk-show parlance—he's funny, sure, but he always makes the rounds when he has a new movie, no big deal. But this was the first (and probably only) time that his appearance h...
The Ecstasy And Agony Of MLK: <i>Selma</i>, Reviewed
Recently, a listener called into a talk-radio show I was on, asking if Paramount had sped up the release of its Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. drama Selma to capitalize on the recent deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The timing just seemed too perfect. I had to tell him that it was all just ...
Stoned Immaculate: <i>Inherent Vice</i>, Reviewed
With each passing movie, Paul Thomas Anderson wanders further and further away from the terrain mapped out by his filmmaking peers. He hasn't gotten lost yet: Inherent Vice may not be as undeniably astounding as his last three efforts, but that doesn't make it any less startling or wonderfully...
White Flight: The Knuckleheaded <i>Exodus: Gods and Kings</i>, Reviewed
1. I'm not sure who ever could have thought that Exodus: Gods and Kings was a good idea. Putting aside—only for a moment—the much-discussed "whitewashing" of the cast, the movie seems almost specifically designed to appeal to absolutely no one. It's a Bible story, but it paints Old Testament God as ...
Chris Rock's Rock-Star Moment: <i>Top Five</i>, Reviewed
Chris Rock has such a warm, magnetic presence that it's baffling that he has never seemed that comfortable as an actor. Cutting and ferocious as he may be onstage, onscreen he often comes across as timid, like he doesn't belong. (It's telling that when I think of his film career, the first thing t...
<em>Happy Valley</em> Could Be Anywhere, And That's The Scariest Part
Late in Amir Bar-Lev's harrowing and deeply fair documentary Happy Valley, which tracks the Jerry Sandusky tragedy at Penn State and its craterous aftermath, attorney Andrew Shubin, who represented several of Sandusky's victims, says:...
Sequel Fatigue: <em>The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1</em>, Reviewed
I've now seen three Hunger Games films, and I feel confident saying that eventually, something is finally going to happen in one of them. There's been no shortage of incidents—action scenes, plot twists, emotional moments—but what's strange about this series is that everything always seems to ...
So Stupid It Just Might Work: <em>Dumb And Dumber To</em>, Reviewed
1. Before you get too wrapped up in the negative early reaction to Dumb and Dumber To, the 20-years-later sequel to the 1994 mega-hit, remember that critics hated the first one. Critics are notoriously bad at predicting what comedies are going to stand the test of time; the target is always moving...
Despicable Us: <em>Foxcatcher</em>, Reviewed
Foxcatcher is a movie about America, but what makes it so compelling is that you don't realize it at first. Directed by Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball), the film is too subtle—and, frankly, too strange—to explicitly make some simple, overarching, grandiose statement. And yet, when you replay ...
The Superhero Starter Kit: <em>Big Hero 6</em>, Reviewed
If you were trying to turn a kid onto action films for life, you could do a lot worse than starting him or her off with Big Hero 6. So fundamentally familiar that its alternate title might as well be My First Marvel Superhero Movie, it does just about everything you'd expect from an animated ad...
Christopher Nolan's <em>Interstellar</em> Is Half-Unwieldy And Half-Amazing
Two years ago, just as I was about to see The Dark Knight Rises, I wrote a glowing overview of its director's career. A huge fan of Christopher Nolan since his second feature, 2000's Memento, I explained how he had almost single-handedly restored my faith in blockbusters thanks to his Batman films...
Get On The Jake Gyllenhaal Bandwagon Now: <em>Nightcrawler</em>, Reviewed
1. Why don't we talk about Jake Gyllenhaal more? This is an actor who...
2015 Oscar Watch: Yes, It's Time To Start Arguing About This Already
As of this second, we are 122 days away from the 2015 Academy Awards, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris as Billy Crystal growls angrily in the corner and everyone tries real hard not to make a Renee Zellweger joke. That's a ludicrously long time from now, but there won't be a single moment between now...
Edward Snowden, Before The Storm: <em>Citizenfour</em>, Reviewed
Movies are lots of things, but "important" isn't one of them. It's not that they can't be meaningful and life-changing, but when a critic's praise tries to go beyond that, it raises red flags for me....
Michael Keaton Forever: <em>Birdman</em>, Reviewed
Birdman doesn't have any right being as fantastic as it is. Structured around a gimmick—the whole movie is meant to look like one continuous shot—and featuring a potentially eye-rolling plot device (a has-been actor's personal and professional life comes crashing down on him in the days before...
Bill Murray's Memes Now Outshine His Movies, And <em>St. Vincent</em> Won't Help
What was the last great Bill Murray performance? Maybe Broken Flowers from 2005? Lost in Translation from 2003? Nowadays, some of his best work—or at least the work that gets the most attention—is nowhere near the big screen. He shows up at bachelor parties. He crashes regular folks' engagemen...
Love, Actually: David Fincher's Dark, Thrilling <em>Gone Girl</em>, Reviewed
In early 2011, when David Fincher was getting ready to shoot The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo while in the midst of Oscars promotion for The Social Network, the director made a revealing comment about how he separates his work into two categories: "movies" and "films." To his mind, Fight Club a...
André 3000 Channels Hendrix, Finds Himself In <em>Jimi: All Is By My Side</em>
In the early 2000s, OutKast seemed poised for world-conquering superstardom. But flush with the success of 1998's Aquemini and 2000's Stankonia (and hit singles like "Rosa Parks" and "Ms. Jackson"), the Atlanta hip-hop duo of André 3000 and Big Boi fractured instead. When the double-solo-album...