[7] Warren Beatty made his screen debut alongside Natalie Wood in this Elia Kazan film about sexual repression in 1920s middle-America. Beatty and Wood play Bud and Deanie, high school lovers who plan to get married and consummate their growing sexual urges. But their parents and their own conflicted emotions end up tearing them apart, with Bud wandering aimlessly and Deanie landing in psychiatric care. …
[7] Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey star as returning prisoners of war who have been unwittingly hypnotized to become sleeper agents for Communist China in the American political arena. Whenever either man sees the Queen of Hearts from a deck of playing cards, they are compelled to obey the next order they receive from anyone. But while the men are being used like pawns by …
[4] Writer/director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, Enter the Void) serves up the tale of Murphy (Karl Glusman), an American man in Paris whose life is turned upside down and inside out after he has sex with two different women, decides he loves only one of them, but carelessly impregnates the other. Love features several graphic depictions of sex — engorged appendages, bodily fluids blasting toward the …
[7] Jack Black stars in this quirky comedy about a beloved Texan mortician who begins a relationship with one of the town’s wealthiest widows and becomes prime suspect in her murder. Writer/director Richard Linklater (Boyhood, Dazed and Confused) adapts from a true story and involves several real-life townspeople as supporting players in the cast. The documentary style of the film fits the story very well, …
[7] George Clooney stars in this thriller about a lawyer who gets called in by a major corporation to “fix” a potential whistle-blower who is losing his mind the longer he keeps his secret. I never thought I would enjoy this movie because the marketing made it look so drab and dreadful, but it’s actually a solid little thriller where one wrong move or some …
[8] Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) serves up an old-fashioned gothic romance the likes of which we haven’t seen on the big screen since Roger Corman last dabbled with tales from Edgar Allen Poe. Heavily inspired by the Bronte sisters and Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Crimson Peak is the story of Edith, a young turn-of-the-century American woman (Mia Wasikowska) wooed into the dangerous embrace of …
[8] Matt Damon carries this Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator) film based on the book by Andy Weir. Half the film is practically a one-man show, with Damon playing a NASA astronaut feared dead and accidentally abandoned on Mars for several years. The other half of the run-time is split between Earth and the returning Mars spacecraft. Once NASA discovers Damon’s character is still alive, …
[6] On one hand, The D Train is a conventional buddy comedy of sorts, about a loser who tries to redeem himself by convincing a popular former classmate to come to their twenty-year high school reunion. On the other hand, the movie is a bold exploration into material you just don’t see that often. The film stars Jack Black as the loser who becomes obsessed …
[6] Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd mostly succeed in saving this somewhat pedestrian thriller from Lifetime Movie territory. Freeman plays a policeman in search of a possible serial killer and Judd plays the one woman who was able to escape the killer. Together, they try to piece together her memories to find the killer and free the growing collection of young women he has collected. …
[5] Gosh. I guess I just don’t get this movie. I mean, it’s beautiful and all, and the performances are certainly something special. But what the hell do I take from the story? It’s so open-ended (thematically), it’s practically a Rorschach test — probably by design, but frustrating nonetheless. Joaquin Phoenix plays a WWII veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress who serendipitously falls in with an …
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