A picture as intelligent and sophisticated as the offbeat new drama I Origins is a rarity in American movies, but given that this one was written and directed by Mike Cahill, who gave us 2011’s similarly thoughtful Another Earth, it’s no surprise. But his…
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Gabriel Iglesias just may be the first celeb I’ve seriously drank with, if you can count knocking back a couple in a suite at Chicago’s James Hotel, ground zero for the star’s junket to promote this weekend’s opener and Iglesias’ stand-up concert film, The…
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Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning writer and director who penned Million Dollar Baby and directed his own screenplay for Crash (movies that won consecutive Best Picture Oscars in 2005 and 2006), has maintained a lower profile in the last few years. And while his success…
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A tale told with sound and fury signifying perhaps the best big-budget sci-fi action movie since Avatar, director Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow is proof positive that a summer superthriller needn’t be mindless, this one so innovative in its storytelling and satisfying in its…
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It’s been some time since I’ve felt overwhelmed by a movie, or maybe just a character. Perhaps even longer since I fell in love with one. That happened a few days ago, and I think I still have butterflies. In the unabashedly tear-inducing movie…
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The main reason to see Maleficent, the new revisionist take on Sleeping Beauty featuring heavy doses of girl power and even more CGI, is its most special effect, a silky smooth performance by Angelina Jolie as the titular, anti-heroic villainess in spite of herself. Heretofore…
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Forget about it being a summer franchise picture, because X-Men: Days of Future Past is a thoughtful and thematically dense anti-blockbuster, a movie full of ideas that largely eschews huge action set-pieces through most of its running time in favor of a surprisingly compelling…
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A superfluous rehash of a much better movie, Brick Mansions is the limp American version of the terrific 2006 French action picture District B13, which was a scrappy surprise that introduced the uninitiated to the high-flying sport of parkour and its gravity-defying founder, Gallic…
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In three films—Tree of Life, Mud and now Joe—seventeen-year-old actor Tye Sheridan has carved out a niche as a rural teen that experiences lost innocence and disillusionment about the world by close examinations of his adult role models. Remarkably sensitive and without posture, Sheridan…
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