It’s been more than a dozen years since indie heartthrob Billy Crudup declared his status as a golden god in Almost Famous. In actor William H. Macy’s feature directorial debut he’s back in front of a mic, playing a grieving father who becomes the unlikely catalyst for a new band in an Oklahoma college town’s local music scene. But Crudup’s good looks and magnetism have hardly diminished, and even in his character’s sorry state he still overshadows his younger costars, especially Anton Yelchin’s frumpy music geek, even after his makeover. Read the full review here.
As the closing credits roll on writer/director Theodore Melfi’s first feature film, the actor Bill Murray carelessly hoses down a dead lawn as he mutters along to Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm." This final act of the film, ostensibly in the guise of Murray’s portrayal of Vincent McKenna, a Vietnam veteran from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, exemplifies the dilemma of watching most of Murray’s performances and the impossibility of separating the most recent character from the familiar and legendary personality. Read the full review here.
The fictional town of Carlinville, IN, is far from the Marvel Universe, but director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) goes to ridiculous lengths to plunk the voluble Robert Downey Jr. down there. There’s no direct correlation between Downey Jr.’s arc reactor-hearted superhero Iron Man and this slick Chicago defense attorney, but there are many similarities, including the expectation that he will swoop in to save the day. Read the rest of the review here.
Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader aren’t twins; they’re not even related. But the two do seem to share a secret language, like twins purportedly develop, most probably forged on and off the stage at “Saturday Night Live,” where they appeared together from 2005 to 2012. They’re currently costarring in The Skeleton Twins, a dark comedy directed by Craig Johnson (True Adolescents) from the screenplay he wrote with Mark Heyman (Black Swan), and not only are the actors’ roles synchronous, so are their performances. Read the full review here.
The premise of director Ira Sachs’ latest film, which he co-wrote with Mauricio Zacharias, has a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. After 39 years together, Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) get married, and as a result George gets fired from his job teaching music at a Catholic school. But that’s not even the biggest outrage: this loss of income forces the two to sell their light-filled New York co-op, turning them temporarily homeless and utterly dependent on relatives and friends for accommodation. Read the full review here.
There are enough breadcrumbs in Michaël R. Roskam's first American feature to lead an astute viewer to the true nature of Tom Hardy's Brooklyn bartender long before the final reveal. There's a wide-eyed literalness in the character, which makes him seem like an obedient simpleton, but quietly lurking underneath is a stagnant, knowing rot associated more with Norman Bates than Forrest Gump. Read the full review here.
The first feature collaboration by North Carolina School of the Arts grads Martha Stephens (Pilgrim Song) and Aaron Katz (Cold Weather) is truly a film of odd couplings. Katz, originally from Portland, is one of the originators of mumblecore (according to Wikipedia, a subgenre of American independent film characterized by low budget production values and amateur actors), while Stephens’ previous movies portray characters trying to escape their Appalachian roots.For Land Ho!, the two bring professional actor, Australian Paul Eenhoorn (This Is Martin Bonner), together with relative newcomer Earl Lynn Nelson, Stephens’ second cousin. Nelson’s acting experience is limited to two of Stephens’ previous films; this marks his first lead role, which Stephens wrote specifically for him. Read the full review here.
The new Woody Allen picture, Magic in the Moonlight, stars Colin Firth as Stanley Crawford, a world-famous magician who performs in racist drag as the mysterious and thereby exotic Chinese conjuror Wei Ling Soo. It’s Berlin in 1928, so cultural sensitivity is not an issue but, thankfully, Crawford drops the disguise, including silk robe and false queue, as soon as he walks off stage. Read the full review here.
Brendan Gleeson is without equal in the new film from writer/director John Michael McDonagh. In his role as Father James, rural parish priest in County Sligo in the Border Region of Ireland, he’s a singular force, isolated through his acute intellect as much as the region’s wild geography. Read the rest of the review here.
The journey in director Lasse Hallström’s latest film is much longer and more meandering than the title implies. Based on the best-selling novel by Richard C. Morais, the story follows the Kadam family’s emigration from Mumbai to England to the south of France, eventually settling on son Hassan (Manish Dayal), a talented family-taught chef, and the family restaurant’s rivalry with Madame Mallory (Helen Mirren), the proprietrix — her picayune well-deserving of the suffix -— of the Michelin-starred restaurant across the street. Were that all, it would certainly be enough, but the screenplay by Steven Knight continues on to Paris, where Hassan has become a celebrated chef unable to enjoy his isolated success. Read the rest of the review here.
Just once a director should be allowed to dirty Diane Keaton again. Recently, the actress has made a career of skimming the surface, delivering performances as starchy and stiff as the crisp white linen menswear she’s been donning off-screen since her breakthrough role as Annie Hall, and has particularly clung to as part of her on-screen identity in the last two decades. So it’s especially aggrieving that in his latest romantic comedy director Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally, American President) allows Keaton to give more of the same phony hysterics and false warmth. Read the full review on KCActive.com.
Oscar-winning writer/director Paul Haggis (Crash, In the Valley of Elah) makes films in accordance with the Scottish savory pudding of the same name, also an acquired taste. Both are a mélange of entrails sheathed tightly in guts, but the films are more awful than the offal. And Haggis’ latest, a clumsily pretentious meta-fiction, bungles its own philosophy through broadly drawn characters and hackneyed reveals. Read the full review here.
