Title Tws summary Trust ▼ Year Viewable | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Great – if sadly flawed – exploration of the early California oil industry, dramatized through the exploits of an entrepreneurial ogre. A Chinatown for Oil, the movie serves as fascinating Golden State period piece and socialist screed, decrying the imagined crimes of tycoons as it celebrates … |
||||||
America. My theory is that Forrest Gump serves as personification of the early baby boomers, i.e. of the America of that era. Naive, idealistic, rambunctious, Forrest’s life functions as allegory for the cultural journey of the generation that came of age during the 60s. Whether you buy that…
WikChip Image
Lovely Hanks
|
||||||
Think of this de facto zombie movie as No Country for Little Boys: a surreally grim milieu through which a dauntless Father must shepherd his pure-hearted Son. Such a nihilistic extravaganza creates ample opportunities for life lessons of the most extreme sort. The result is gripping, though …
WikChip Image
Dauntless Paternal Love
|
||||||
Deeply affecting, Terrence Malick’s ultimate family drama omnisciently observes a nearly idyllic household afflicted by two bolts of tragedy. Love, marriage, birth, death, and all the hoods – fatherhood, motherhood, brotherhood, childhood, adulthood, neighborhood – get touched upon in the proces…
WikChip Video
This is how movie brilliance appears.
|
||||||
Man of Steel isn’t lite or frivolous, making it a disappointment to those expecting snark or bubblegum. Christopher Nolan takes heavyweight DC superheroes seriously, first producing, writing and directing The Dark Knight trilogy, an…
WikChip Image
A superior Jor-El begets a super Kal-El
|
||||||
New addition to the boxing movie canon? Absolutely, complete with elemental title, elemental story and devastating performances. A female power story as much as a male one, Melissa Leo, Christian Bale and Mark Walhberg’s maternal-fraternal triangle pegs the meter for codependency. When Amy Ada…
WikChip Image
All in the (dysfunctional) Family
|
||||||
Fingering two of society’s soft spots, Cyrus lampoons middle-aged singles looking for love and grown kids who’ve been emotionally indulged their entire overly-protected lives. Plus it generates plenty of LOL moments in the offing. Score. John C. Reilly and Jonah Hill deliver great performa…
WikChip Video
Snow White and the Two Dorks
|
||||||
Cate Blanchett transfixes in Woody Allen’s superior dramedy Blue Jasmine. Playing the Jasmine of the title, Blanchett goes from Park Avenue socialite to broken vixen in a performance that masterfully oscillates between elegance and rawness. That last almost assures her an Academy Award nomina…
WikChip Image
The great Cate in Chanel & pearls w ...
|
||||||
Two great movies, one bad title, The Place Beyond the Pines could lose 20 ticks and still be twice typical Hollywood fare. Ryan Gosling & Bradley Cooper play two guys on opposite sides of the law, whose paths cross to lethal effect. Both are conflicted and sympathetic. Neither is untarnishe…
WikChip Image
Eye Dropper TearTat -- nice touch
|
||||||
The Way, Way Back is the perfect summer movie from this Summer of `13. It opens and closes with a painfully awkward teen in the late, lamented way-way-back of a 1970 Buick Estate Station Wagon. In between he spends a life-changing summer at the beach house of his mom’s asshole boyfriend, pl…
WikChip Image
Awkward boy meets way, way cool girl
|