J Robert Oppenheimer lived a life worthy of a tragedy by Sophocles or Shakespeare.  Like Oedipus or Othello, he planted the seed of his own destruction and nurtured the life it engendered. Since the cultures of Ancient Greece or Elizabethan England are unlikely to reoccur, we are left with what we have.  What we have…

Here it is, folks: The best movie of 2014. Sure, the Academy released their list recently, but apparently they didn’t feel that this film was worthy of inclusion. I don’t know why. Birdman was amazing, but did they really find four films better than John Wick, Inherent Vice, Nightcrawler, and The Interview? Why are there…

In its opening minutes, the children’s story-themed slasher Winnie-The-Pooh: Blood and Honey shows a hint of genuine promise. Obviously this public domain cash-grab was never going to be some masterpiece of the cinema, but in the (barely) animated opening exposition, I was reminded of the camp classic Jack Frost (not the one with Michael Keaton),…

The thing I love about January action movies is recognizing how little care is put into them. That isn’t me being mean. Imagine a writer is pitching an action movie and they non-sarcastically say the word Beekeeper. After doing a spit take, the studio executive is going to immediately think two things. One – January.…

The best film of the past quarter-century…

Subtlety in cinema has been on the chopping block for a while now. A deft edit, small asides from characters, the shot of hands that tells the audience more than half a page of dialogue ever could. These things are currently endangered by overly chatty characters, info-dump exposition, and tedious worldbuilding palaver. Not so in…