I don’t know about you guys, but I’m still waiting for this season of Shameless to get a move on already. It’s by no means bad, but the sum of the parts is not quite adding up to a cohesive whole, at least not yet. That in itself isn’t a sin, but there’s also not…
Say what you will about Scandal, but Shonda Rhimes and her team know how to do a mid-season opener right. “Run” is energetic, tense, revelatory, and downright pulse pounding for early every minute of its running time. Seriously. “Run” is definitely a season best and mostly a series best episode. I didn’t get to watch…
After six long years, the last few of which were rather unexpected, Parenthood draws to a close in solid if unsurprising fashion. So much of this finale has been more or less locked in since the season premiere, if not even before then, that it’s hard to really consider this episode as anything other than…
Every year since 2009 when Monique won for Precious, the winner of the race for Best Supporting Actress has pretty much swept every single award along the way and struck a hatred for her into our hearts. Don't believe me? Look at Anne (with an E) Hathaway and Melissa "Take out my own FYC ad"…
This is going to be a hard category to get right. There are three extremely strong contenders that are all Best Picture nominees and all have their own strengths. The first possibility is Birdman. The film won the screenplay award at both the Golden Globes and Critics Choice. However, the film was ineligible at the Writers…
The penultimate episode of Parenthood is in the curious position of both needing to tie up outstanding stories in time for the finale, while also not really having very much in the way of outstanding stories to tie up. The result is an episode that is emotionally if not narratively satisfying; an episode that in…
Jason Reitman, of Thank You for Smoking and Juno, brings us his latest comment on modern society: Men, Women, and Children. This film follows the lives of several teenagers and their parents, befitting the title. It focuses on the constraints of our technological world, loss of human connection, with an overarching theme of insignificance. The…
Dan Gilroy makes his directorial debut with Nightcrawler, which he also penned, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. A gripping psychological thriller, Nightcrawler follows Louis Bloom (Gyllenhall), a persistent young man eager to break into the world of L.A. crime journalism. Having first screened on the Toronto International Film Festival, Nightcrawler claims a Halloween release date, a fitting…
Jennifer Kent wrote and directed the Australian horror film, The Babadook. Based on the short film, also by Kent, The Babadook rose to critical acclaim after being premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. This is Kent’s debut feature film, drawing inspiration from early horror, fairy tales, and magic. Kent puts a hand-crafted twist on a…
Jean-Marc Vallee directs the biographical film written by Nick Hornby, Wild. This film is based on the memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, written by Cheryl Strayed. Vallee’s Dallas Buyers Club last year elicited two Oscar-winning performances, setting a high standard for Reese Witherspoon in the lead role and Laura…
