From a story standpoint, I could take or leave Paper Moon. Sometimes, movies about thieves and con artists are tough sells because it's hard to root for, identify with, or side with a lawbreaker or despicable person. Paper Moon attempts to inject some family and heart into its story to so-so effect.
Read MoreIngenious tells this true rags-to-riches story with a personable touch and realistic scale. Dallas Roberts and Jeremy Renner play a pair of extremely relatable guys and have outstanding chemistry together as characters and actors.
Read MoreArbitrage is still a worthy film to see this fall season. It offers timely questions and enough entertaining mystery to play off of our tough economic times.
Read MoreOne Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has Nicholson in the spotlight, but it's the little people that make this movie tick. This may sound like an over-reaching superlative, but One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has easily one the best male ensemble performances of any movie I've ever seen. They were mostly young and middle-age unknown actors then that became go-to character actors after this film.
Read MoreWhile this site has grown to traffic several thousand pageviews a month expanding to people far beyond my circle of friends, I've never had in my mind that it would get "noticed."
Read MoreNotorious is far from top-notch Alfred Hitchcock, but, as myself and fellow members of the Alphabet Film Club noted: a bad Hitchcock film is still better than 90% of the other movies out there. I think that assurance rings true. Notorious is a tedious and nearly tiresome melodrama anchored by a Cary Grant character that's hard to like and an Ingrid Bergman character that's even worse.
Read MorePremium Rush is a tightly packed and nicely paced little New York thriller. While the story is essentially a simple "beat the clock" scenario that maybe we've seen before, it offers decent twists to keep us guessing and clever plot-essential rewind flashbacks to provide exhale time and "ah-ha" wisdom of our characters' back-stories.
Read MoreGabriel Byrne is in the driver's seat and takes through the many layers that make up this film. Through his crooked ethics (more on that later), we gain crooked ethics to a fun slice of American crime. While Miller's Crossing can't compete with Goodfellas from the same year, the silver medal is not a bad prize to have.
Read MoreIf this is news to you and you've never seen (or heard of) Manhunter before, make it a point to seek it out. Because of Mann's presence as the director, don't buy the Miami Vice knockoff 80's talk that other folks try shoehorn. Michael Mann's film has far more balls than anything from his TV series and is better than Brett Ratner's Red Dragon remake of the same Thomas Harris novel from 2002.
Read MoreI was one of the six people who saw The Lookout back when it hit theaters in 2007. I was kind of "meh" about it then and wasn't a Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan. I haven't seen it since, so I was very happy to revisit it for the Alphabet Movie Club. I wasn't going to vote for it, but I wasn't sad that it won.
Read MoreTo put my creativity to use and honor both the gods of education and beer, I've arranged three "honor roll six-packs" of the best college movies.
Read MoreThe Bourne Legacy is more of a new chapter than it is a sequel or reboot. Think of it as if you're watching a new Star Wars movie from the point-of-view of the Storm Troopers in the background at the Death Star, but just really important ones.
Read More
