Opening Friday at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, 2501 W. Memorial Rd., The Past begins as Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to Paris after four years to finalize a divorce with his estranged wife, Marie (Bérénice Bejo, The Artist). The ambivalence between them — an easy rapport pivoting to sniping and then back again — surfaces […]
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Philomena
Since the Oscar nominations were announced last month, gold-derby prognosticators have referred to Philomena as “the ninth nominee” in the Best Picture field. Their implication is that among all those films up for Hollywood’s highest honor, the British dramedy is the one least likely to win and least deserving of being there. That’s insane, of […]
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The Hunt
Ever since last month’s Golden Globes, when an absent Woody Allen was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award, much ink has been spilled amid renewed allegations of him molesting his adopted daughter, Dylan, when she was 7. Last week, on film journalist Jeffrey Wells’ Hollywood Elsewhere website, one commenter on the ongoing […]
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Inside Llewyn Davis
There are several shots in Joel and Ethan Coen’s latest that (intentionally) offer a similar imagery, only with one very significant difference: Its protagonist, Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac, Drive), is a lone wolf in the truest sense — aloof, misunderstood and tragically unsuccessful in his personal and professional endeavors. Set in 1961, the film opens […]
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Dallas Buyers Club
With Dallas Buyers Club, director Jean-Marc Vallée (The Young Victoria) takes the cinematic liberty to tell Woodroof’s story, revisiting the 1980s during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, when rampant conservatism, Reagan’s War on Drugs and the Christian right dominated American culture. In what appears to be the role of his career, an overwhelmingly […]
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12 Years a Slave
The film’s discomforting imagery is depicted with shrewd precision and unflinching directness, both pivotal to the potency of the film. But McQueen also proves himself to be a uniquely accomplished storyteller, and the story here is extraordinary. Based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 autobiography of the same name, 12 Years follows a free black man’s sudden […]
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The Fugitive: 20th Anniversary Edition
Even people who have never seen it — shame on you — tend to know what it’s about: Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford, never better) is accused of murdering his wife. The cops don’t believe his story of the real culprit being a one-armed man … and neither does the jury that sentences him to […]
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Blue Jasmine
Opening Friday exclusively at AMC Quail Springs Mall 24, 2501 W. Memorial, Blue Jasmine tells two stories. The first is about a rich socialite wife living more than comfortably in New York with her business-savvy husband. The second involves a distraught woman who sustains herself with alcohol, antidepressants and more alcohol. She’s always short of […]
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Amour
In other words, the guy is definitely not the lovey-dovey type. But that unblinking, cold-blooded aesthetic is largely what makes Amour, coming to home video after an Academy Award win for Best Foreign Language Film, so remarkable. In its depiction of an elderly Parisian couple coming to terms with illness and looming death, the film […]
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Revenge for Jolly!
I’ve never heard of writer/producer/star Brian Petsos, but he must have friends in high places to get such a project off the ground. He plays Harry, a self-described good guy who’s done some bad things, for which his murdered pup, Jolly, has paid the ultimate price. With no job, Harry has nothing better to do […]