Boyhood is remarkable stuff, filled with drama, intrigue, suspense, laughter, tears and all the rest that comes with that.

Make no mistake, Obvious Child is a stunning debut. More than that, it’s also a terrific piece of cinema I’ll be thinking about and extolling the virtues of for a heck of a long time to come.

In many ways Locke is the thriller of the year, a real time, ticking clock masterwork of tension and suspense that’s as unrelenting and unmerciful as anything likely to see a release in all of 2014. In others, it is nothing more than a quickly paced melodrama of responsibility and regret, focusing entirely on a single character, the choices he has made and the price he is forced to pay when the bill for his self-centered actions come tragically due.

a SIFF 2013 review Nothing Cheap About These Bleakly Satirical Thrills Cheap Thrills is the best movie you are likely going to be too scared to see. An eviscerating satirical assault on financial disparity and the smug, narcissistic tendencies of a seemingly uncaring elite coupled with the anything-goes neediness of a working class oftentimes willing […]

Beauteous Ernest & Célestine C’est Magnifique France’s Ernest & Célestine was up against both Disney’s Frozen (the eventual winner) and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I had not seen it before the Oscars had been handed out so I couldn’t really say whether or not it deserved […]

Anderson’s Budapest Hotel a Comedic Masterwork I’ve said more than a handful of times in the past that the works of Wes Anderson are arguably made for certain palates, each motion picture a fanciful journey into a highly stylized world acquired tastes adore while everyone else scratches their collective chins wondering what all the fuss […]

This movie is a titanic achievement that I’m still mulling over, so many pieces of it speaking with such unabashed eloquence calling the finished film an instant classic is almost a no-brainer.

Her a Timely Spectacle of Intimacy, Heartbreak and Understanding Spike Jonze is as singular and as original a filmmaker as there is working today. The man behind such iridescent achievements as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, the idiosyncratic filmmaker has outdone himself with the beguiling, multifaceted science fiction-influenced love story Her. Set in a Los […]

Inside Llewyn Davis revels in its own lyrical idiosyncrasies, each note a tuneful reminder that the songs we sing secretly to ourselves are oftentimes full of bigger lies than the ones we happily hum out loud for the rest of the world to mindlessly listen to.