Blooming out of a cradle of artistic and narrative perseverance, it is clear a philosophy of great care and pleasant patience was given to “Pete’s Dragon” by Lowery and company. The film enhances the magical charm audiences remember from the original with newly gained maturity to operate as a loving family drama and touching adventure of friendship. It is a welcome and calming addition of heft painted by that superb idyllic tone. The wonderment never overplays its moments.
Read MoreThe title of "Knight of Cups" from polarizing filmmaker Terrance Malick refers to the tarot card of the same name, a symbol that represents someone "constantly bored, in constant need of stimulation, but also artistic and refined." You don't say? That label may just apply to anyone in the audience watching this film. Your copacetic taste is better than this film and you will be spiritless and dispassionate, matching the assigned astrology.
Read More"Welcome to Me" is a Mobius strip of a trainwreck. The film is a trainwreck... of a trainwreck. Starring an extremely invested Kristen Wiig, the film is, to its credit, a bold character piece and black comedy that seeks to put a trainwreck of a person on display in an effort to preach larger moral questions. As bold as it is in that intention, "Welcome to Me" doesn't achieve that and overshoots every landing possible. It's that really well planned gag or stunt that can't match the real thing because it's been too manufactured to where the unpredictability is taken away or feels forced. It's the second coming of "Dinner for Schmucks," in terms of cringe comedy, and that film was bad but at least funnier.
Read MoreMY 300TH REVIEW: Like all truly ambitious science fiction of the highest order, "Interstellar" pushes the limits for personal interpretation of both the science and the fiction. Both genre elements are wildly heightened to a bold and epic scale to address the internal opposites between logic and spectacle, science and sentiment, and brains and emotion. Each of those ideals have their soaring high points and matching low points across the board in "Interstellar." It all comes down to your taste, which makes "Interstellar" easily the most polarizing film of the year. You will either love it to the core or hate it to the bone with very little room for a middle ground.
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