Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, his follow up to his Oscar-nominated Blue Valentine, is big, sprawling and highly ambitious. It is his attempt at an American opus that’s equal parts Tennessee Williams and Sidney Lumet, a movie where the sins of the father are passed unto their sons, so on and so forth, making the picture a multigenerational epic filled with interesting characters, heartbreaking situations and broadly emotional ideas.

The Shining is a classic that any cinephile worth their salt loves to play around with and interpret, and it likely goes without saying that many are going to keep doing just that forever…and ever…and ever…and ever…

The truth of the matter is, while G.I. Joe: Retaliation is without a doubt a far superior effort to its predecessor, while it does contain more than its fair share of fun moments and has more than a few performances worthy of a gentle tip of the hat, I don’t have the slightest wish to watch it again at any point in the foreseeable future. Make of that what you will.

The propulsive nature of the visuals is a sensory revolution, while the climactic fade to black is eccentrically nifty, putting the themes littered throughout Welcome to the Punch into a provocative perspective I wasn’t anticipating.

I was pleased to discover how grounded and honest this potentially silly narrative turned out to be. Keeping the focus on Portia, never belittling her, always treating her with respect, never making fun of her actions or attempting to transform the character into a figure of ridicule or pity, Admission does a solid job of making her a fully-formed figure, and as such she becomes incredibly easy to relate to as things progress.

Not for the faint of heart, certainly not for anyone looking for a pleasant diversion or a happy night out at the multiplex, Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills is nonetheless a fantastical stunner and, without question, a work of art I’m unlikely to soon forget.

Makinov shows he knows what he’s doing, ratcheting up tension at times in ways that had me sitting on the edge of my seat ready to gnaw the nails off of my fingers.

While nothing unexpected happens, while there weren’t any surprises, the comfort I felt in seeing this family break new ground while coming closer together as a unit still put a smile on my face, and as such The Croods ended up being a sojourn into the fantastically prehistoric I kind of adored.

My feelings towards Olympus Has Fallenaren’t exactly euphoric, and my reaction to the overall motion picture itself isn’t anywhere near positive. At the same time, for a schlock Die Hard variation (i.e. knockoff) Fuqua’s film isn’t anything close to a disaster, it’s too competently acted and directed for that to be the case. At the same, it’s also not anything even slightly special, making watching it more of thing to do when there’s nothing else to do than a necessity worthy of rushing out to the multiplex to experience.