February 11, 2013

Zero Dark Thirty*

    Zero Dark Thirty Release Date: January 11, 2013 Runtime: 157 minutes Rating: R Studio: Columbia Pictures (Sony) Director: Kathryn Bigelow Cast: Jessica Chastain; Jason Clarke; Kyle Chandler; Jennifer Ehle; Chris Pratt     [POSSIBLE SPOILERS, I guess…] Goooooooood movie!! The search for Osama Bin Laden took a really […]
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April 3, 2013

Side Effects

    Side Effects Release Date: February 8, 2013 Runtime: 106 minutes Rating: R Studio: Open Road Films Director: Steven Soderbergh Cast: Jude Law; Rooney Mara; Catherine Zeta-Jones; Channing Tatum     Instead of going out with a bang, Steven Soderbergh decided to go out with more of a tremble. […]
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December 21, 2013

Her

    Her Release Date: December 18, 2013 (limited); January 10, 2014 (wide) Runtime: 126 minutes Rating: R Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Director: Spike Jonze Cast: Joaquin Phoenix; Scarlett Johansson (voice); Amy Adams; Chris Pratt; Rooney Mara     This one was a total surprise! My expectations were low: another […]
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June 21, 2014

Compared to What: The Improbable Journey of Barney Frank

Controversial. Witty. Acerbic. Straightforward. No bullshit. These are all words that can describe the former US Congressman from Massachusetts, Barney Frank. His voyage from local politician to the national stage is documented in Sheila Canavan and Michael Chandler’s “Compared to What: The Improbably Journey of Barney Frank,” which screened last night at the 16th Annual Provincetown Film Festival.
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September 17, 2015

Black Mass

Johnny Depp is a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination in what is arguably the best performance of his career as James “Whitey” Bulger, a small-time Boston hood who grew to become one of the FBI’s most wanted. Scott Cooper’s riveting “Black Mass,” based on the book of the same name by Boston Globe journalists Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, is a brutal and uncompromising piece, right in line with the life of its subject.
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April 30, 2016

King Cobra

A movie as salacious and lurid as the story it’s telling, “King Cobra” has its flaws, but is generally an effective, lean, and very mean piece of “ripped-from-the-headlines” cinema. Boasting a cast including James Franco, Molly Ringwald, Alicia Silverstone, Keegan Allen, a hasn’t-been-this-good-in-years Christian Slater, and former teenybopper Garrett Clayton, ejecting himself from tweendom straight into the tighty-whities of grown-up films, “King Cobra” offers a stylish though straightforward, yet not uncompelling, dramatization of this tawdry tale of murder and sex.
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September 17, 2016

Sully

Hero worship doesn’t get much more blatant, or for that matter, more entertaining than “Sully,” Clint Eastwood’s dramatization of the Miracle on the Hudson from a few years back. Tom Hanks easily inhabits Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger’s wings in an effectively understated (and remarkably physically realized) performance that ranks among one of the actor’s best.
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August 17, 2017

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson

Here is a documentary that should be required viewing in high schools, in gender studies classes, and in history classes from now on. “The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson” is an important and indispensable piece of work about one of the foremost founders of the modern LGBT movement.
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September 13, 2017

I, Tonya

Craig Gillespie’s I, Tonya takes a ripped-from-the-headlines true story and infuses it with unexpected empathy. Invaluable assistance is provided from star Margot Robbie, whose performance here is even more star making than her showy breakout turn in Wolf of Wall Street. Her work, as well as that of co-stars Sebastian Stan and Allison Janney (not to mention director Gillespie and cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis) should garner plenty of attention come awards time.
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