Have you ever watched a bully repeatedly pick on the same kid? Or maybe stood by while someone went overboard scolding a bad dog and began to beat it? If you enjoyed either of these activities, then you might also enjoy Inside Llewyn Davis. That initial description may come off harsh, but this journey of a folk singer first engaged me before eventually leaving me cold and angry at it. The titular Llewyn is played by Oscar Isaac, and he’s quite good in the role. In fact, Carey Mulligan is fantastic and even Justin Timberlake turns in one of his…
Author: Justin
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People love to predict the end of Hollywood due to bloated budgets and poor quality films. Yet, every year lots of good films get released to both critical praise and public success. Many other films, however, go overlooked by audiences. Yes, some of the films listed below were actually released in 2012 overseas, but I’m a US moviegoer, so forgive my bias towards films that saw a wide release in US theaters in 2013. Mud Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter) directs this modern homage to Mark Twain. Two boys discover a mysterious man living on an island in the river, but…
Afternoon Delight had its moments, excuse me, of delight. Unfortunately, those moments were few and far between for me. In between I found a movie searching for a rudder, lost in a sea of possibilities. Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is married to Jeff (Josh Radnor), but despite one child and an upper-middle class lifestyle, she seems terribly unhappy. Rachel and Jeff aren’t having sex, her friends are too-pushy mothers, and her therapist (Jane Lynch) is encroaching on Rachel’s time with her own issues. She need something to spark her life and it comes in the form of McKenna (Juno Temple), a…
This is not a film for the cynical. There is a moment in the film, it will be different for each person, where you have to decide to either check out or lose yourself in it. I suspect many may choose to check out, but they’ll have missed a wholly enjoyable romantic fantasy. About Time is the story of Tim (Domhnall Gleeson) who is told on his 21st birthday that he, like the other men of his family, can travel in time. The rules are that it has to be within his own life so, as his father (Bill Nighy)…
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of those actresses that still feels like a well-kept secret. Despite starring on Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Veep, she still feels so fresh and different that you’re sure you’ve discovered her for the first time. The idea to pair up with James Gandolfini, her male equivalent in fresh and different, was a casting coup for the ages. Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, a divorced mother who has all but given up on the dating scene. One night at a party she meets tall, stout, and not-altogether-unappealing in Albert (Gandolfini). The…
In recent years the horror genre has shifted from the torture porn films of franchises such as Saw and Hostel, to more traditional ghost story hauntings such as Paranormal Activity and The Conjuring. Like a good horror villain, however, you apparently can’t kill torture porn and it has moved over to roost in the thriller genre with Prisoners. Denis Villeneuve’s Prisoners is the bleak, dark story of Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) whose daughter is abducted one Thanksgiving. He does have a wife and another couple loses their daughter in the same abduction, but these three characters are only in the…
In college I minored in non-profit administration and took several courses with social work majors. While I wanted to help kids, they often exhibited a need to save kids. I sometimes wonder how many of them ended up beaten down and broken by a dispassionate system, or their impassioned selves? Director Destin Cretoon’s Short Term 12 asks similar questions, and it’s to its credit that it doesn’t return easy answers. Grace (Brie Larson) works at a foster care facility and exhibits as much emotional damage as the kids she supervises. For that matter, the entire staff seems one day behind…
“It’s really human of you to listen to all my bullshit,” is maybe Molly Ringwald’s best line from the teen classic Sixteen Candles. It speaks to the hours we all spend as teenagers complaining, droning narcissistically about ourselves, and waxing poetically. It’s also disarmingly innocent and earnest at the same time—which also happens to be the perfect description of The Spectacular Now. Sutter (Miles Teller) and Aimee (Shailene Woodley) are opposites of the high school social scene attracted to one another when Sutter wakes up from a hangover in her front yard. That meeting could appear in a lot of…
The first law of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics states, “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” These laws have been the basis for countless troves of science fiction, with the idea being that artificial life would need some sort of guidelines to protect it and us. Rarely, though, has the first law been applied to the question of emotional harm. In writer and director Spike Jonze’s new drama Her, this question bombards us alongside many others. The “robot” in Her is an artificial intelligence (AI) based…
No, this article has nothing to do with which developer needs to shed a few pounds or who should forgive whom. Instead, this is a look at ten changes I think the game industry needs to make to grow healthier, be fairer to consumers, or just generally rock. If you disagree, feel free to comment below, but this really isn’t a hit piece to anger people. I’ll post that later. 1. Enough with the downloadable content confusion. I don’t actually have a problem with the concept of downloadable content (DLC). I know many gamers complain about the very concept, but…