And it’s beautiful. Beautiful because the Wachowski’s are reaching for the skies. Beautiful because the brother-sister directorial tandem doesn’t know when to quit and don’t have a clue as to how to keep their voluminous ambitions in check. Beautiful because the parts are so gorgeous and spellbinding I not-really-all-that-embarrassingly loved them more than I did what it was they ultimately added up to in the end.

Better, the director stages a climactic siege on a mysterious alien stronghold beautifully, and while there are plot holes to spare and clichés up the wazoo that somehow doesn’t make the finale any less suspenseful and exciting. It’s terrific, energizing stuff, and as silly as it all proves to be I can’t say I wasn’t happily smiling all the same by the time things finally came to their conclusion.

Predestination, as whacky, odd and haphazard as it oftentimes might be, is just a heck of a lot of brain-twisting fun.

In the case of this 169-minute 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Contact epic, it is likely Nolan’s reach exceeded his grasp, much of this otherworldly adventure never gelling together in ways that are comfortable or satisfying. Yet Interstellar is unabashedly thrilling, euphoric and mesmerizing.

Lucy takes familiar genre tropes found in science fiction, Asian action flicks and superhero origin stories and slyly turns them on their head, crafting a freewheeling satire that’s as inspired as it is loony.

I Origins is a beautiful treatise on self, human understanding, religion, science and most of all faith. It moves, shifts and evolves in naturalistic fastidiousness, everything building to a magnificent conclusion.

That Transcendence doesn’t ultimately work is decidedly a problem but that doesn’t make the experience of watching it any less riveting, and as failures go this is arguably one I’ll be thinking about and pondering for many months to come.

Under the Skin doesn’t apologize for being difficult, everything inside its cinematic shell a rollercoaster of emotional tumult worthy of being ridden multiple times.

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 […]