A mild-mannered husband copes with his wife’s disappearance and police who are increasingly skeptical of his innocence in Gone Girl. Beloved children’s book author Amy Elliot (Rosamund Pike) could have anyone. She’s bright, beautiful, wealthy and cultured. Into her life comes an unassuming, soft-spoken, but disarmingly suave man named Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck). His puppy dog-like adorableness and […]
Liam Neeson has evolved into one of the most reliable tough guys in motion pictures. His career certainly didn’t start out that way with most of his memorable work taking place in dramas like Rob Roy and Schindler’s List. He convinced me that he could be a badass when he lengthened both his hair and […]
Movies are all about manipulation. Filmmakers have been using tricks to manipulate audiences since the very earliest recorded films that include a train coming directly at the audience and a magician disappearing repeatedly in flashes of smoke. These were simple matters of forced perspective and clever editing, but at the time, the audiences were fooled. […]
A simpleminded barkeep and his streetwise partner struggle to make ends meet in The Drop. Bob (Tom Hardy) spends his nights working at a local bar — Cousin Marv’s — in the heart of Brooklyn. It’s a typical neighborhood bar filled each night with sports fans, passersby and the occasional degenerate. Bob’s partner, Marv (James Gandolfini in his final […]
A resourceful CIA operative is brought out of retirement to protect a valuable witness in The November Man. Peter Devereaux (Pierce Brosnan) was making the most of his retirement from the CIA, living the good life in quiet obscurity and surrounded by the calming beauty of Switzerland. When a critical witness to a major Russian plot […]
The wife of a loathsome real-estate developer is kidnapped by a couple of amateur crooks in Life of Crime. In the late ’70s, Detroit hadn’t yet fallen into the complete disarray it finds itself in today, although it was well on its way. A local housewife at the time, Mickey Dawson (Jennifer Aniston), spends her days […]
I especially love comic books and graphic novels that take chances or push the limits of the medium. Frank Miller’s Sin City graphic novels wowed fans of comics with their art, storytelling and noir style and feel. Those elements carried over to the film adaptation, still one of my favorite comic book ports to date. […]
A German intelligence officer searches for a Chechen immigrant whom he’s certain will lead him to a deeper terrorist network in A Most Wanted Man. The world’s intelligence communities are dominated by both reality and paranoia concerning future potential terrorist actions. Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman) heads up a secret anti-terrorism unit in Hamburg. His main task […]
An eerily detached loner with a singularly obsessive focus chases after the men who ran off with his car in The Rover. In a dystopian Australia, after a devastating economic upheaval, everyone’s left to fend for themselves for their own daily survival. The collapse turns most of the sparse populace into desperate opportunists or outright bandits. Eric […]
A homeless loner turns to vigilante revenge when his parents’ killer gets an early release from prison in Blue Ruin. There’s something not quite right about Dwight Evans (Macon Blair). This is not your typical lost soul of society. He breaks into homes to take baths and enjoy some cable TV before returning to solitary afternoons […]
An insecure radio personality finds his world turned upside down with the buyout of the station and its unexpected consequences in Alan Partridge. Radio DJ Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) is a fairly well-known character in England, created for various sketch pieces by Coogan and others a number of years ago. He is, however, virtually unknown to audiences […]
A narcissistic safe-cracker with a notoriously short fuse is released from prison and is determined to set things right in Dom Hemingway. Have you ever met someone who goes out of their way to consider everyone around them? Always careful to not say anything to put someone off or to make anyone feel uncomfortable? Well, that’s […]