The director juggles all of the aspects of the scenario with confidence, none of the three main stories transpiring within the confines of the film losing their focus, all of them coming together beautifully during The Prey’s energetic climax.

Say what you will about either movement but the heart and soul of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party did bring about conversations about wealth disparity and cultural (and corporate) privilege in this country, those ideas taken to a grotesquely unsettling extreme in the world imagined by DeMonaco.

There’s much of Violet & Daisy I did respond to, large portions that struck the kind of chord I unapologetically responded to.

“Going through a difficult experience isn’t the end of the line. There can be hope. It’s out there; you just have to grab it.”
– Scott McGehee

Without a doubt, this big budget high-concept science fiction spectacle is Summer 2013’s first unmitigated disaster, and seeing how anyone involved creatively could walk away from this calamity unscathed is way beyond me.

The Kings of Summer shouldn’t work, the fact that it does a pleasant summertime cinematic revelation I couldn’t have been more thankful for.

In the end, Now You See Me isn’t anything to get worked up about one way or the other, and while I’d never recommend the watching of it I have this sneaky suspicion it will play rather well on Cable television for viewers with short attention spans and other things on their minds.

When Alyce makes the turn towards dismembering madness it’s hard not become infatuated with what she is going to do next or how she imagines she’s going to extricate herself from an increasingly blood-splattered dilemma of her own creation. It’s fascinating, disgusting and horrific all at the same time, everything building to an eerily ghoulish conclusion of malevolent serenity that caused my blood to run icily cold.

Before Midnight, like its predecessors, is a masterpiece, and I have a feeling I’ll be holding it near and dear to my heart for the rest of my life.