MovieSorter

loading Title loading Tws summary loading Trust loading Year ▼ Viewable
The Drop
Very Good 66 Points 2014

Dennis Lehane took a short-story set in his characteristic Boston and expanded it into a screenplay set in Brooklyn. This works, great writer that he is, even if the story’s legs don’t so much cohere as cohabitate.

The Drop won’t cohabitate as among his best with Mystic River

Full Review »
WikChip Image Hardy & Schoenaerts play American.
Gone Girl
Great 66 Points 2014

Gone Girl stirs the pot, no doubt about that. Premiering amidst the NFL-stoked domestic violence uproar, this sordid thriller about a wife’s murder is akin to throwing gas on a fire. But never mind all that societal stuff, is it a good movie? Yes, a great one, albeit far from perfect.

The es…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Smile! Oops, maybe not.
Foxcatcher
Really Great 83 Points 2014

Channing Tatum’s tortured performance as Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler Mark Schultz anchors Foxcatcher. Mark Ruffalo and Steve Carell orbit above him as Dave Schultz, his older brother and fellow Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler, and John du Pont, the crazy rich guy who murdered one of…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Steve Carell masterfully plays this guy.
American Sniper
Perfect 66 Points 2014

Saving Private Ryan has a new neighbor atop the pantheon of Great American War movies. Chris Kyle, Bradley Cooper and Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper illuminates the reality of America’s 21st century war as never before, just as Steven Spielberg’s classic did about the Greatest Generation’s …

Full Review »
WikChip Video 10 Questions with the real Chief Kyle
NO
Great 66 Points 2013

So big it came down to YES or NO. A national referendum on authoritarian rule, YES or NO?

NO won, a shock to Chile, many Latinos and the world. Turns out that pop was the way to nail the weasel. The weasel was General Augusto Pinochet, the strongman who had fixed the economy but crushed diss…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Selling Liberation Like Toothpaste
Olympus Has Fallen
Good 83 Points 2013

Spectacular calamity followed by impressive vengeance makes Olympus Has Fallen an amply satisfying cinematic experience. So what if it’s jingoism. It’s extremely well executed jingoism, by jingo! Patriotic action-movie fans – like me – happen to like this sort of button-pushing entertainment…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Stunts and FX make the movie.
Star Trek Into ...
Really Great 83 Points 2013
Best. Star Trek. Ever.

Some may grade it Perfect, understandably so. Me, I grade Star Trek Into Darkness a tick above its Great predecessor – Really Great and the best Star Trek ever.

If J.J. Abrams sees fit to include the perfect Star Trek theme music before the closing credits of h…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Spock in the volcano
2 Replies
  • Wick – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://www.viewguide.c...
  • BrianSez – Regarding "Wick's Review":http://www.viewguide.com/m...
The Iceman
Great 83 Points 2013

Pity The Iceman – the movie, not the Mafia hitman. Great mob movies are broadly treasured, even more when they’re about real guys who committed real crimes. And yet this one has flown under the radar.

Six-four, with big Polish hands, the Iceman could take anybody and often did, mostly unde…

Full Review »
WikChip Video Serious Business
The Wolverine
Great 83 Points 2013

The title sucks, but the movie rocks. Rox tops sux. How does it rock? Let us count the ways.

  1. Marvel spins well-wrought yarns, with superheroes defined by their foibles as much as their powers. Wolverine has love-lost and anger issues. At some level, who doesn’t?
  2. Nice that he’s facing-o…
Full Review »
WikChip Image Issues? He's got a few.
1 Reply
  • Wick – Regarding "BrianSez's Review":http://viewguide.com/m...
Only God Forgives
Great 66 Points 2013

Blood begets blood as a Bangkok blood feud drives waves of retribution in artistic director Nicholas Winding Refn’s crime thriller Only God Forgives. Think Drive crossed with Bronson, set in Asia.

If that doesn’t mean anything to you, imagine Ryan Gosling in a savagely violent, brooding…

Full Review »
WikChip Image Makes the Wicked Witch seem nurturing