French filmmaker Gaspar Noe's new film, "Love," demands audience acceptance of seeing art in the explicitness of sex. When you bring up the idea of explicit sex, the immediate label is "pornography." Lead by trio of unknown leads and shot in exploitative 3D, "Love" is going to have a hard time (go ahead and start inserting "that's what she said" at every opportunity) shaking that label of "pornography" in favor of "art."
Read More"Brooklyn" is an forthright, approachable, and esteemed historical drama where the dignity and honesty soar to heavenly heights to shine on the plights of love and independence. This tremendous film nestles a powerful love triangle within a touching immigrant and independent woman's saga from the 1950s. More than just being some high-end chick flick, "Brooklyn" stands as one of the finest films of the year and an immediate Oscar contender.
Read MoreWith the arrival of "Spectre" for Daniel Craig's fourth outing as 007 and the returning follow-up of Academy Award-winning director Sam Mendes, questions arise to the notion of raised and renewed expectations. How do you top "Skyfall?" How do you improve or follow a game changer like that? The first answer is you can't. The best this film can do is continue the momentum and build to the next game changer. "Spectre" stands as exactly that precise first step down from a summit on its way to find the next mountain and next great challenge.
Read MoreThe western film genre has always had a violent backbone. Even in the sunniest and most heroic of examples, more often that not, we're watching a struggle of survival where it is kill or be killed in a raw rural landscape. We label, separate, and celebrate heroes from villains, but all are killers with only opposing morals and justice of different degrees separating them. The violence is ever present. Few traditional westerns embrace its violent reality. "Bone Tomahawk" surges head first into it with absolute courage and graphic disregard.
Read MoreDue entirely to his talent and appeal, two hours of Bradley-being-Bradley works and the film will rightly entertain at an acceptable superficial level. The subject is simple and the the risk is low. The food is pretty, the ensemble is smooth, and the cliches are pre-made. While "Burnt" offers a flourish or two to spark a little extra entertainment, it is far from the grass roots personal touch and smaller scale passion that was Favreau's "Chef" a year ago. "Burnt" is, in essence, more elitist and that requires you to be impressed, but only at a distance.
Read More"The Assassin," directed by Taiwan New Wave director Hou Hsiao-Hsien, is the latest and brightest wuxia film looking to make an international splash. The film was an official Main Competition selection of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the awards for Best Director and the Soundtrack Award. It is making the rounds of the international film festival circuit, including a recent Highlight selection bow at the 51st Chicago International Film Festival, and will represent Taiwan's entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the 88th Academy Awards this coming February.
Read More"Room" is, without a doubt, one of the most resonating and difficult films this writer has ever seen. It is a "welcome to my world" scenario that no one should ever have the unfortunate ability to match with full empathy that comes from shared experience. For it to transcend that and blossom to enrapture you the way it does is something completely spellbinding. You will not find a more powerful film experience this year.
Read More51st Chicago International Film Festival special presention
There is a tangible and winsome spirit that emerges through this quick 80-minute journey of "The Middle Distance." First-time director Patrick Underwood rightly sticks to artistic vision and solid storytelling over cheap tricks and the urge to throw monkey wrenches at everything for the sake of standing out. A easy story such as this doesn't need overindulgence.
Read More51st Chicago International Film Festival special presentation
In this writer's opinion, documentary films are at their strongest when they merge two symbiotic pairs of traits. A good documentary and its human interest story merges truth with its narrative. Secondly, a good documentary merges its overarching message with art. Any of those four ingredients alone are not enough. In the documentary genre, a narrative without truth defeats its nonfiction purpose and the central message being delivered needs the artistic touch requisite to its chosen medium of cinema. As long as it can achieve those two mergers, a successful documentary can take any subject and give it proper focus.
Read MoreSewn with care to document an unopened storybook file on little-rememberd, forgotten Cold War heroics and theatrics, "Bridge of Spies" is the kind of historical drama that Steven Spielberg can make in his sleep. In a way, this is Spielberg's throwback answer to "Argo," three years after Ben Affleck's film swept the top Oscars away from Spielberg's own "Lincoln." He doesn't need that one-upmanship for his ego. "Bridge of Spies" is more a reminder that the master is still capable of making a winner with ease.
Read More51st Chicago International Film Festival special presentation
With "Embers," we definitely have something to bite into from first-time director Claire Carre. The film occupies a domestic world after an unseen neurological disaster that caused societal collapse. People drift aimlessly through urban ruins trying to eek out existence and survival. Worst of all, the people still alive now are stricken with amnesia and now have the inability to keep short-term memory. Think "Memento" on a community-sized scale.
Read More"Steve Jobs" chronicles soul-bearing small measures of the real man behind the public persona of genius. The blood feuds and many glorious shouting matches deliver one narrative bombshell after another. Using a unique three-act structure, the artistic result is nearly perfect. Superior to its peers in so many areas of technique and performance, "Steve Jobs" stands boldly as one of the finest films of 2015.
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