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.

The Purge: Anarchy is an unapologetically violent exercise in sensationalistic mayhem, that fact is not up for debate, and for my part I’m fine with this, part of me even a tiny bit curious exactly where DeMonaco and company might be interested in taking things next.

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.

If it had been 20 minutes shorter, had the filmmakers not been so encumbered by the need to maintain fidelity to the MCU, I think it is safe to say Captain America: The Winter Soldier would be the best Marvel movie thus far.

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 […]