“It’s always good to make sure you’re never too good at one thing at a time,” mumbles Andre Allen (Chris Rock) to Chelsea Brown (Rosario Dawson), the New York Times reporter profiling him, upon learning that she dabbles in poetry, photography, and music. And yet, it could just as easily be applied to “Top Five,” […]
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‘Foxcatcher’ wrestles with entitlement and male bonding
John du Pont (Steve Carrell with a prosthetic nose) was supposed to ride horses, a regal sport for a regal family — America’s richest dynasty. But he defied his overbearing mother’s (Vanessa Redgrave) wishes, declaring, “horses are stupid!” When we first hear this in Bennett Miller’s new film “Foxcatcher,” it’s not a seven-year-old du Pont […]
Mockingjay Part 1: too many hovercrafts, not enough Finnick
By chasing after a PG13 rating, Mockingjay Part 1 has lost much of the moral ambiguity that made the books so interesting.
‘Beyond The Lights’: Gina Prince-Bythewood gets romance right
Prince-Blythewood understands that romance is all about the connection forged between two people, so she wisely shoots the majority of Kaz and Noni’s scenes together in two-shots. Whether it’s sitting on the couch of her home, listening to her hit as she tries to turn it off in embarrassment, or pouring over her box of lyrics on the floor of her bedroom, or sitting in his car at the airport eating fried chicken. These are two people sharing time and space, and we’re always watching what’s unfolding between them, not just how things are for each of them separately.
Force Majeure: Ruben Östlund finds the comedy in marital strife
In Force Majeure, an avalanche is a catalyst for the hilarious breakdown of a marriage. Östlund pushes all the events just to the edge of absurdity, to find the comedy in an uncomfortable situation.
Eddie Redmayne on Stephen Hawking and shooting out of order
In The Theory of Everything, Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn and Les Misérables) gives an impressively detailed performance as cosmologist Stephen Hawking. The biopic chronicles several decades in Hawking’s life – and his relationship with his wife Jane (Felicity Jones) – from his time as a Physics Ph.D. student at Cambridge, where they met and he […]