2014 wasn’t what you might call a great year in film, though it was a respectable one of solid enough pictures, if only a few truly inspired much passion. And while most of the below won’t be taking home Academy Awards in February, my…
Read MoreUnbroken, Angelina Jolie’s long-awaited adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption, the extraordinary story of World War II vet and former Olympian Louis Zamperini’s experiences surviving Japanese POW camps, is a crushing movie disappointment. What should…
Read MoreDirector Rob Marshall and Disney had high expectations and a bit of skepticism riding on their adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s beloved 1986 musical Into the Woods, and what initially seemed an unwieldy combination—a fractured trio of fairy tales where love doesn’t…
Read MoreAn Enigma Wrapped in a Riddle of a Brilliant Screenplay: Graham Moore on The Imitation Game’s Tortured Hero, Who Won the War but Lost the Battle
Few pictures this season reach the complexity and substance of The Imitation Game, the story of Alan Turning, the genius mathematician plucked from Cambridge to assemble a crack team of code breakers and decipher Enigma, the German communications waging World War II. From the…
Read MoreWhat do you do when you’re mired in a painful past and your identity is so shaped by regret and emptiness that you no longer recognize yourself? If you’re Cheryl Strayed, you draw a line in the sand—one that reaches 1100 miles along the…
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