“A hysterical treatise about how that insidious collection of tubes called the Internet has destroyed our family values and ruined everybody’s lives, this has got to be the crotchetiest, most alarmist movie ever directed by a 36-year-old man. Men, Women & Children would probably be the worst film released all year, had Jason Reitman not also made Labor Day.” – Movie Mezzanine, 10/02/2014
“But something’s slightly off about Ian’s upward trajectory. He’s suffering from bizarre, ever-expanding interstitial interludes–surreal gross-out hallucinations inspired by crappy eighties television programs and exercise videos. The spot-on parodies include Tough As Nails Tiger Team A and (my personal favorite) Officer Zygor, Alien Cop.” – North Shore Movies, 10/02/2014
“Cinematographer Mihai Malaimare Jr. shoots the city as a gorgeous ruin, favoring sparse wide shots with heavy negative space bearing down on these isolated characters. There’s a doomy grandiosity befitting the title, and when violence inevitably occurs it is something not to be cheered, but mourned.” – North Shore Movies, 09/19/2014
“The most beautiful irony is that Altas Shrugged’s previous two installments proved so financially calamitous, Aligaro and his co-producers financed this one with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. Hard not to wonder what Ayn Rand would have thought about her precious bootstrap self-sufficiency manifesto being funded by begging for handouts.” – North Shore Movies, 09/16/2014
THE DROP * * 1 / 2
Starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, Matthias Schoenaerts, John Ortiz and James Gandolfini. Screenplay by Dennis Lehane. Directed by Michael R. Roskam.
“After seven years in the crucible of Studio 8H, Hader and Wiig effortlessly slip into a rapport that suggests a lifetime of shared experiences. Speaking a secret family language of private jokes and subtle, offhand acknowledgements, they know each other better than anybody else – which means they also know how to hurt each other worse than anyone else.” – Movie Mezzanine, 09/11/2014
“A riveting tale told in the most pedestrian and unimaginative fashion possible, absent any outrage or blame. Like far too many contemporary war films, Rory Kennedy’s Last Days in Vietnam would rather we celebrate individual acts of valor than question the larger, more rotten context that made them regrettably necessary.” – Movie Mezzanine, 09/04/2014
“Juliette Lewis has always brought with her a messy sexuality and isn’t the kind of performer you catch ‘acting.’ She often throws herself so emotionally into roles that her slightly addled line readings sound not like words from a script, but things that just popped into her head for the first time and she’s not having an easy time at all getting them out.” – Movie Mezzanine, 09/02/2014
LIFE OF CRIME * *
Starring Jennifer Aniston, John Hawkes, Yasiin Bey, Isla Fisher and Tim Robbins. Written for the screen and directed by Daniel Schechter.
THE NOVEMBER MAN * * 1 / 2
Starring Pierce Brosnan, Luke Bracey, Olga Kurylenko, Will Patton and Bill Smitrovich. Screenplay by Michael Finch and Karl Gajdusek. Directed by Roger Donaldson.
SPLICED PERSONALITY 