“This is a film of uncommon emotional directness, of simple truths presented unadorned. The Dardenne brothers have been cranking out one small-scaled social realist triumph after another with such clockwork regularity, it’s hard sometimes not to take them for granted, i.e. this being their first masterpiece since the last one.” – Movie Mezzanine, 12/23/2014
“I’m sad to report that Annie is fucking terrible. It’s listless and incompetently staged, the talented cast gasping away in a hermetic vacuum of dead air, snarky in-jokes, and limp musical numbers. The choreography is all flailing arms and rictus grins, running around in circles instead of actual dancing. I honestly started to feel sorry for these performers.” – Movie Mezzanine, 12/18/2014
“Otto stumbles his way through raunchy mishaps of the suddenly single. He’s comically overwhelmed by all the no-strings hookups available to handsome, unattached guys his age now that everybody’s on the Internet. The movie might be overstating these a bit, and if it isn’t, then I’m moving to North Carolina.” – Movie Mezzanine, 12/17/2014
TOP FIVE *** 1 / 2
Starring Chris Rock, Rosario Dawson, Gabrielle Union, J.B. Smoove and Tracy Morgan. Written and directed by Chris Rock.
ZERO MOTIVATION * * *
Starring Dana Ivgny, Nelly Tagar, Shani Klein, Yonit Tobi and Tamara Klingon. Written and directed by Talya Lavie.
1. Listen Up Philip 2. Only Lovers Left Alive 3. Snowpiercer 4. Two Days, One Night 5. Under The Skin 6. Inherent Vice 7. Life Itself 8. Venus In Fur 9. The Homesman 10. Calvary
Honorable Mentions: The Babadook, The Dog, Edge Of Tomorrow, The Immigrant, John Wick, Love Is Strange, Night Moves, Top Five, We Are The Best! – BOFCA, 12/05/2014
“Before I Disappear takes Curfew’s fleet 19 minutes and adds another hour and change of disjointed and extraneous nonsense. Perhaps the screenplay was written to mimic the main character’s doped-out dissociative state, but it feels more like a collection of disconnected set-pieces than a cohesive film of its own. Less was more.” – Movie Mezzanine, 11/26/2014
THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 1 * * 1 / 2
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson and Donald Sutherland. Screenplay by Peter Craig and Danny Strong. Directed by Francis Lawrence.
“Bar-Lev’s cameras simply place us at ground level in the midst of pastoral State College, PA as the revelations resound. The deeply unsettling Happy Valley is not a work of reportage so much as it’s a portrait of a community suffering from mass dementia. This is the scariest zombie movie I’ve seen in ages.” – Movie Mezzanine, 11/19/2014
“I realize I’ve described Force Majeure as a comedy, but there aren’t any actual jokes, per se. The pitch-black humor erupts at odd moments during awkward pauses, prompted by Östlund’s droll, dispassionate gaze at all these roiling caveman emotions tamped down for appearances’ sake in such a fussy, affluent locale.” – North Shore Movies, 11/19/2014
