Disney’s new film Saving Mr. Banks alternates between compelling and troubling. Its parallel story lines and characterization of the manipulative and fatherly Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) make it a slightly entertaining mess.
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Joel and Ethan Coen return with their latest film Inside Llewyn Davis, which follows Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac), a brilliant folk musician, but miserable human who is struggling to live off of his music in New York in 1961.
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Of course, the film is full of familiar characters and cutting-edge computer-animated action scenes, yet at times this two-and-a-half-hour middle chapter lacks urgency and its easy to feel the running time.
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Although it’s far from Frears’ best work, Philomena is a solid film that offers the chance for Coogan and Dench to spend much of their time alone together onscreen in discussion of everything from trashy romance novels to the existence, and nature, of a higher power.
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All is Lost is a stranded-at-sea survival story with almost no dialogue and a soulful lead performance from 77-year-old Robert Redford.
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The danger in remaking a great film is twofold. It draws scrutiny from an existing audience familiar with the source material, but if the remake is too similar, then why create the remake in the first place. Spike Lee manages to fall victim to both.
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‘Nebraska’ bears the familiar Payne stamp of melancholy mixed with hard-edged satire, while still feeling very personal.
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McConaughey is a wonder. The actor lost 50 pounds to play the tightly coiled antihero, and he gives Woodruff a determination that’s practically unhinged.
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Catching Fire may be a slight improvement but it suffers from the same weaknesses of The Hunger Game offering plodding action sequel light on action.
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Through a rich, grueling portrait of the machinery of institutionalized slavery, Steve McQueen asks us to examine the rotten core of slavery and how it permeates our entire culture, not just to ponder life as it was in the 1840s.
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Blue is the Warmest Color, the nearly three-hour French character study of a lesbian relationship, is a remarkable film. The film’s notorious sex scenes are just a small part of the larger picture, because the movie asks a lot of timeless questions about love and devotion.
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It’d been nearly a decade since I’d last seen Empire Records before I went to the Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet to catch it last Thursday.
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The International House of Prayer, based right here in Kansas City, has ulterior motives in Uganda besides missionary work. Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams new documentary ‘God Loves Uganda’ is an interesting look at the result of their efforts.
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The supernatural-inflected teen romance genre butts uncomfortably up against an apocalyptic survival story in How I Live Now, which opens this weekend at AMC Studio 30 in Olathe and Liberty Hall in Lawrence.
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Chris Hemsworth returns at the titular thunder god in a movie that is a combination sci-fi, fantasy and Dr. Who that works – barely.
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