[8] Joel Edgerton (The Gift) brings Garrard Conley’s true story of dangerous, misguided gay conversion therapy to the big screen with the help of Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea) plays Conley in the film, a young teen who is pressured to confess his homosexuality to his baptist preacher father (Crowe) and loving mother (Kidman). With …
[7] Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck star in Andrew Dominik’s dramatization of the last months of famous outlaw Jesse James’ life. Pitt plays James and Affleck plays his admirer-turned-assassin, Robert Ford. The young Ford character is smitten from the outset, but ridicule from James and the other gang members slowly hardens his heart. Jealousy eventually turns him against his idol. As James, Pitt is unstable …
[4] About two minutes into Punch-Drunk Love, an absurdist romance from Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, Magnolia), you learn the movie doesn’t really take place in the real world and none of the characters are real, either. It’s all… some other version of reality. A version where Adam Sandler sells toilet plungers out of a warehouse, collects pudding to cash in on sweepstakes, has seven …
[7] Melissa Leo turns in a fierce, memorable performance in writer/director Courtney Hunt’s story of two women who strike up an unlikely partnership smuggling illegal immigrants to make ends meet. After a Mohawk woman from a nearby reservation steals her car to make a smuggling run, Leo decides to join the woman on her next trip. Both women hate what they’re doing, but the Mohawk …
[8] A young German man (an award-worthy David Kross) has an affair with an older woman (Kate Winslet), only to discover many years after the affair ends that she was a guard at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After she is found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison, the man (later played by Ralph Fiennes) still can’t get her out of his mind. …
[6] Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later, Sunshine) stars as a troubled teen sent to a group therapy clinic after intentionally driving his car off a cliff. If I’d never seen Girl, Interrupted, this movie might resonate more with me. But as it is, it’s too much of a clone of the Winona Ryder film to really distinguish itself. But Cillian’s face is beautiful to look …
[7] Steve McQueen (Shame, 12 Years a Slave) brings Lynda La Plante’s novel to the screen. Widows is about a woman who rallies the girlfriends and wives of her deceased husband’s gang of robbers, all of whom died in a botched robbery with her husband, to execute plans for what would have been their next heist. They all need to do this because their dead lovers …
[8] Rami Malek stars as Freddie Mercury in Bryan Singer’s (X-Men, Valkyrie) biopic about the formation and explosive success of rock group Queen. The film centers primarily around Mercury — his estranged relationship with his family, his homosexuality, his drug use, and eventual battle with AIDs — but without ignoring the other members of the band, played by Gwilym Lee, Ben Hardy, and Joseph Mazzello …
[7] Nicolas Cage stars as a third shift New York ambulance paramedic haunted by ghosts and clinging to his sanity in this grim, sometimes darkly comic film from director Martin Scorsese and Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader. Cage’s character gets a natural high from saving people’s lives, but he hasn’t saved one in months — and he needs his fix. A cardiac arrest case leads him …
[7] Meryl Streep stars in the true story of a plutonium processing worker who is purposefully contaminated with the lethal substance after she initiates a whistle-blowing campaign about the company’s safety standards. Kurt Russel plays the love interest and Cher plays the best-friend and would-be lesbian lover. As directed by Mike Nichols (The Graduate), Silkwood conjures a very specific and palpable setting — the impoverished …
Copyright © 2025 | Theme by MH Themes