It’s only natural this week to be thinking about love—and all the associated tropes of “romance” engineered by conventional media. Real-life romance, however, rarely progresses in the neat, homogenous way we’ve come to expect from our movies. So what if, like Love...
What Oscar Nominees Do to Pass the Time: ‘Seventh Son’ Stars Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore and Kit Harington
Every year, in between the big heave known as the fall awards season and that folly we call the Academy Awards, the major movie companies turn into a cinematic slag heap of the bad, the risible and the inexplicable. Even on paper, the latest February throwaway,...
Cake
Jennifer Aniston in 'Cake.' Cinelou Films Jennifer Aniston de-glams for a tough portrayal of a woman putting her life back together From all the accolades Jennifer Aniston has been getting for playing a scarred, suicidal, pain-ridden accident victim in Cake, you'd...
In ‘Still Alice,’ losing farther, losing faster
Photo courtesy of Jojo Whilden/ Sony Pictures Classics Julianne Moore is one of the most vanity-free of working actors, sometimes to a fault. Few of her peers, male or female, seem so willing to push into the discomfort zone and flesh out characters who are needy,...
‘Sniper’ Rules Weekend Box Office
LOS ANGELES — Hollywood is prone to superlatives, but this one is truly jaw dropping: “American Sniper,” which arrived in wide release on Friday, is expected to sell about $105.2 million in tickets in North America over the four-day holiday weekend. While America’s...
Making History With ‘Selma,’ Ava DuVernay Seeks a Different Equality
Featured image: Ava DuVernay directing a scene in “Selma.” CreditAtsushi Nishijima/Paramount Pictures. On a swampy afternoon in late June, the director Ava DuVernay stood not far from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., that haunted place where, President Lyndon...
Interstellar and the Unknown Frontier of Humanity
As a filmmaker, Christopher Nolan is often an explorer in his own right. He has journeyed into the complexities of memory, dreams and profound loss, and battled the psychological peril of insomnia and deception. In some form or another, these themes have been in the...
Duvall vs. Downey in The Judge
Unscrupulous yet ingenious Chicago defense attorney, Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) whose specialty is emancipating corporate criminals, returns home to Carlinville, Indiana, an abiding small town he vowed never to return to, to attend his mother's funeral. Hank's...
Throwback Thursday: Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! BEETLEJUICE!!! This weeks Throwback Thursday is dedicated to our favorite "freelance bio-exorcist" Beetlejuice. Starring Michael Keaton, Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis, Beetlejuice (1988) is a classic that, in my opinion, is reaching a...
Overcoming Pain with Laughter in My Old Lady
A viager is a unique French real-estate sale-- a life annuity contract made in exchange for one's home. For example, an old lady may sign a viager contract with an interested buyer and the buyer would pay her annuity until her death, the point at which the contract...