The Fabelmans (2022)

The Fabelmans (2022)

[6] Steven Spielberg tackles his autobiography with this story of his youth and adolescence, discovering his love of film while coping with his parents' untenable marriage. As Spielberg's stand-in, Sam Fabelman, Gabrielle LaBelle is a disappointingly empty vessel, lacking the…
Blue Valentine (2010)

Blue Valentine (2010)

[6] Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in writer/director Derek Cianfrance's (The Place Beyond the Pines) melancholy love story, Blue Valentine. The film cuts back and forth between two timelines, with Williams and Gosling playing Brooklyn lovers at both the…
Venom (2018)

Venom (2018)

[7] Tom Hardy stars as an investigative reporter who becomes the unwilling host body for a gloppy alien creature -- named Venom -- that gives him superhuman powers. At first the possession experience is scary, with Venom being very much…
All the Money in the World (2017)

All the Money in the World (2017)

[8] Ridley Scott (The Martian, Alien) directs the true-life tale of the 1973 Getty kidnapping. After masked men whisk 16-year-old John Paul Getty III off the streets of Rome, his mother tries to get the ransom money from the boy's…
Manchester by the Sea (2016)

Manchester by the Sea (2016)

[9] Not since 1980's Ordinary People have we had such a genuinely affecting movie about loss and mourning. In Manchester by the Sea, a man with a tortured past discovers he is the legal guardian of his late brother's teenaged…
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)

[5]

It takes a while for Sam Raimi’s Wizard of Oz prequel to pull its shit together and make you care a little about what’s happening, but the final act’s (digital) pyrotechnics and displays of combative sorcery help pull the movie just barely into the safe zone. The casting leaves something to be desired. James Franco, whom I normally like, is surprisingly bland in a role where he desperately needs to carry the film. He gets better as the film goes, finally reaching his stride as Oz the Great and Powerful makes his thundering debut to the citizens of the Emerald City.