Suffragette

Carey Mulligan’s reluctant suffragette Maud Watts was born in the laundry where, under the leering harassment of her male supervisor, she worked her way up from the age of seven to 24 to become a sort of straw boss. The young London wife and mother had no time for or interest in participating in politics, nor could she, even if had she the inclination. It’s 1912, and women are still explicitly banned from voting in Great Britain by the 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act. 

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Room

Director Lenny Abrahamson’s (Frank) new film, adapted for the screen by Emma Donoghue from her 2010 Man Booker-shortlisted novel of the same title, starts with a creation myth. The narrator, five-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay), is describing the genesis of his entire universe, which consists only of the shabby objects contained within the confined interior of a small shed called “Room.” A skylight frames an empty sky, the only view to the outside world, which Jack doesn’t realize exists. He and his mom Joy (Brie Larson), known only as Ma within Jack’s limited point of view, are the sole inhabitants of this space.

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Truth (2015)

For his directorial debut, James Vanderbilt, who wrote the screenplay for the 2007 David Fincher-directed Zodiac, returns to the newsroom. This time, instead of following journalists as they painstakingly work, with lives at stake, to solve an insoluble mystery, Vanderbilt, who adapted the script from “60 Minutes II” producer Mary Mapes’ memoir Truth and Duty: The Press, the President and the Privilege of Power, ironically attempts to clarify the events of a scandal by obscuring them. Read the full review here.

Sicario (2015)

The opening scene of the latest film from Denis Villeneuve (PrisonersEnemy) looks a lot like a display in the controversial traveling “educational” exhibit Bodies: The Exhibition, which began touring the country in 2005. An FBI kidnap-response squad raids a house in Arizona and instead of hostages discovers dozens of decaying bodies hidden behind the drywall. The scene, shot by Villeneuve’s frequent collaborator, cinematographer Roger Deakins, is close and grotesque. An FBI agent runs from the dark house, gasping for breathe and vomits in the yard. The shed in the backyard, rigged with explosives, self-destructs, sending debris toward the camera. Read the full review here.

Our Brand Is Crisis (2015)

Director David Gordon Green, who cut his teeth on dramatic indie fare such as George Washington and All the Real Girls, has been venturing into raunchy comedy on the big (Pineapple Express) and small (Eastbound & Down) screen. His latest release, loosely adapted by screenwriter Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) from the 2005 Rachel Boynton documentary of the same name, replaces revelatory scenes of back-room political cunning and devotion to an ideology, however misplaced, with juvenile antics and toilet humor. Read the full review here.

Steve Jobs (2015)

Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social NetworkMoneyball) has loosely adapted Walter Isaacson's detailed biography of the fastidious and bullying co-founder of Apple into an “expressionist portrait” in three acts. The script contains plenty of examples of Steve Jobs’ perfectionist tyranny on full parade and in passing, but Sorkin, to much consternation, remains an apologist for the myth over the man. Read the full review here.

Black Mass (2015)

Director Scott Cooper (Crazy HeartOut of the Furnace) tries to wrangle an entire Wikipedia entry’s worth of facts in this too-thorough biopic of James “Whitey” Bulger, the south Boston hoodlum who became an organized crime kingpin in the mid-1970s until he went into hiding in 1995. Based on the book by former Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, the screenplay, adapted by Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth, justifiably implicates Bulger’s association with the FBI, instigated by childhood friend and agent John Connolly. Yet, Cooper insists on promoting a cult of personality for Bulger — portrayed by Johnny Depp in makeup that when it works makes his malevolence seem intense and otherworldly but when it doesn’t has him resembling the albino Whitey Jackson from the Chevy Chase comedy Foul Play — applying spurious psychological reasoning and literal turning points based on biographical events.
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Grandma (2015)

Lily Tomlin stars as the titular lead in the latest release from writer/director Paul Weitz (About a BoyIn Good Company), but her performance is in sore need of a shove toward invention and risk. It’s not as if Tomlin has ever been very accomplished in the craft; though entertaining, her alter egos on stage are broadly drawn caricatures. Read the review.

Queen of Earth (2015)

Writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s (Listen Up Philip) second feature film isn’t a duet, though it’s drawn comparisons to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Robert Altman’s 3 Women, and even 1992’s Single White Female; basically any movie with two female leads in contentious relationships of varying degrees. But the film’s one redeeming feature is the singular performance of Elisabeth Moss as Catherine, cracking up over concurrent traumatic events. Read the review.

Mistress America (2015)

It seems an apt coincidence that in the same month that “manic pixie dream girl” becomes an official Oxford Dictionaries entry director Noah Baumbach (Greenberg, Frances Ha) releases a film that features the ultimate of its species. This exaggerated version, played by the comedically spasmodic Greta Gerwig, who co-wrote the script with partner Baumbach, is named Brooke, and the most interesting thing about her is that she’s no longer an object lesson in living zestfully for a male counterpart; the audience for her wrecker’s ball way of life is lonely college freshman Tracy (Lola Kirke), who mines Brooke’s unduly hip antics for material. 
Read the full review at KCActive.com.

The Look of Silence (2015)

Director Joshua Oppenheimer’s latest release was conceived as a companion piece to The Act of Killing, his Academy Award-nominated 2013 documentary. But this more reflective and sobering investigation into the repercussions of the mid-1960s mass killings in Indonesia is a far superior film in that it eliminates the ironic distance of the previous film’s scenes of theatrical staging by allowing a representative of one of the victims to have a voice. Read the full review here.

Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)

Although there is a good deal of sexual content in writer/director Marielle Heller’s feature debut, the story ultimately puts more emphasis on the artistic awakening of its 15-year-old title lead than her nascent sex life. Based on the graphic novel The Diary of a Teenage Girl: An Account in Words and Picturesby Phoebe Gloeckner, the film should be required viewing for all girls who qualify for admittance under the PG-13 rating. Read the full review here.