Ghost Story is not the novel that inspired it. Large swaths of Peter Straub’s source material are almost unavoidably absent. But looking at it now, almost 35 years after its original release, the movie holds up rather nicely, anchored by a quartet of performance by some talented pros and some unsettling scare sequences ingeniously staged by the director John Irvin that more than impress.

Rebecca Ferguson is a star, plain and simple, and Tom Cruise’s fearlessness is still a sight to behold. But, truth be told? Rogue Nation doesn’t play near as well the second time around as it did the first. Still very entertaining. Still a good time. Just not nearly as rewatchable as the last two Mission: Impossible adventures have proven to be, and I’d be awfully remiss if I didn’t take a second or two to point that out.

Haynes takes these themes and ideas and makes them sing, never losing focus as to who this story belongs to. Carol is a timeless, brilliantly realized drama that ranks up with there with the finest features the director has ever had a hand in crafting, the smile of recognition and understanding that closes things out an unforgettable celebratory stunner that shook me right to my very core.

As Moby Dick stories go, Melville’s book still stands head and shoulders above all the rest, John Huston’s 1956 adaptation with Gregory Peck a fine version of the story as well. In attempting to ground things in historical fidelity, Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea loses the human intimacy that makes this epic what it is, the resulting movie nothing more than an empty voyage to nowhere that sinks far more often than it swims.

Macbeth (2015) casts a mighty spell. It screws the viewer’s courage to the sticking-place, forcing them to look into corners of themselves they would rather not peer, and much like the innocent flower there’s a serpent hiding here, one whose venom is a glorious cinematic elixir worth being poisoned by.

Ultimately, Carl(a) wins me over for refusing to completely become a fairy tale, yet at the same time offering its main character some semblance of hope for future happiness. While the mechanics of this are a little schmaltzy, what Hershko and DeFreece do with them are anything but.

Sorrentino’s musing are tiredly obvious throughout, and as pretty as the images he composes might be the fact the emotional content simmered right around zero made caring about anything going on impossible. In the end Youth (2015) has nothing new to say, its Italian thematic esthetic nothing more than a mask for an emotional schadenfreude impossible to take pleasure in.

[Legend (2015)] an oddly routine and rote crime opus that haphazardly follows a standard, Scorsese-esque template without seemingly a desire to do anything innovative with it. The movie is strangely forgettable, and even with someone as talented as Hardy giving all he’s got in a dual role there’s frustratingly little to get excited about.

“I love this movie. I love it so much. I like the father-daughter story because it is representative to what so much of our relationship was like. I love how they’ve depicted Trumbo. I love Bryan’s performance. There is nothing about this movie that I can think of that I don’t like.”
– Niki Trumbo