Fall 2013 was an eclectic season for television, with some solid hits (“The Blacklist”), some major duds (“Dads”), some disappointments (“Dracula”) and some surprises (“Sleepy Hollow”).  And just when you’re starting to get used to all those freshmen …Read more

It’s 1992 and people in the Georgian capital of Tiblisi have to fight while they wait in line to buy bread to feed their families. It’s been several months after a coup d’état overthrew the country’s first democratic president and the nation is enter …Read more

January is typically considered the graveyard of the cinematic calendar.  Any film that wants to be eligible for an Academy Award has to be released in theaters before the start of nomination voting (December 27th this year).  So Oscar season is offi …Read more

“Lone Survivor” is based on Marcus Luttrell’s homonymous non-fiction novel in which he detailed the events of the failed Operation Red Wings mission undertaken by Navy SEALs during the Afghanistan invasion on June 2005. The purpose of the mission was …Read more

If you’re like the average viewer, you flip the channel when the Best Documentary category pops up during the Oscar telecast. This is primarily because most people don’t go out of their way to see documentaries in theaters because they are just too h …Read more

In recent years, British filmmakers like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay and Clio Barnard have rediscovered the strange kind of beauty Ken Loach found in the working-class suburbs. They have taken advantage of the combination of steel, concrete and dista …Read more

“Coke and hookers”. When fresh-faced stockbroker newbie Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) sits down with his first boss (Matthew McConaughey), this is the advice he is told will keep him sharp in the stock game. Jordan took the advice to heart, and …Read more

This June, Steven Spielberg made a dire prediction for the implosion of the film industry.  According to him, all it would take is a half dozen or so mega-blockbusters (in the $250 million range) flopping to alter the industry forever.  He painted a …Read more

There is something terribly off-putting about the film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Tony Award-winning play “August: Osage County” and it might be precisely that it wasn’t appropriately adapted for the medium. Cinema after all demands a kind of acting …Read more

“The Past” opens almost exactly where “A Separation” left us two years ago. In the latter, a husband and wife on the brink of divorce are left wondering where the future will take them; while the former opens with the arrival of Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) i …Read more