Big Hero 6 (2014) – Don Hall & Chris Williams

As far as I can tell, Big Hero 6 is the first animated (non-Pixar) Disney film following the shocking phenomenon that was Frozen. While Big Hero 6 doesn’t stand up to Frozen’s financial/cultural impact, it’s considered the superior film critically (albeit by the slimmest of margins) which is an accomplishment worth mentioning. I liked Frozen quite […]

Whiplash (2014) – Damien Chazelle

The desire to be great at whatever it is we feel we’re built to do is something that is probably common to no insignificant portion of the population. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like a deeply relatable part of the human condition. Does anyone want to be forgettable? Unlikely. But how many of […]

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014) – Peter Jackson

Warning: This review will contain a considerable amount of initialisms If it hadn’t been for the Desolation of Smaug, I would have been pretty unexcited for the release of The Battle of the Five Armies. DoS, while still not in the same league as any of the Lord of the Rings movies, at least stirred […]

Wild (2014) – Jean-Marc Vallée

The wilderness brings out some conflicting emotions from me. I’m not someone who likes going outside and I don’t handle bugs or other wildlife well. However, I’ve realized over the last few years that I do really appreciate being out in nature and experiencing the outdoors is becoming more and more a staple of my […]

Top 10 Films

I felt way better about this year’s class of movies than last year’s… so let’s get right to it. Props to Citizen Kelvin for suggesting that we do this. Honorable Mentions: Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier So much better than the first movie. A smart, entertaining, rock-solid action movie. Dawn of the Planet of […]

Boyhood (2014) – Richard Linklater

Boyhood has been receiving almost beyond universal acclaim since it released in mid-2014. I had a tough time finding a way to see it since the film’s release seemed to be less universal than its acclaim. It was actually one of the few films of the year I had honest anticipation for, given my love […]

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) – Frank Miller & Robert Rodriguez

I love the original Sin City. A star-studded ensemble cast in an ultraviolent, beautiful, and heavily stylized (essentially) noir film? That’s definitely my bag. I didn’t have much hope that A Dame to Kill For would live up to its predecessor and after having seen it, I think it’s safe to say that it didn’t. […]

Rebirth of a Blog

As you may have noticed, Flim Crickets has had a bit of a makeover. We were having some reliability/stability issues with the blogging platform we were originally on and have made the decision to take our considerable business elsewhere. Take that, blog.com. We ain’t missin’ you at all. Even better, we have our own domain […]

Interstellar (2014) – Christopher Nolan

(Editors Note: I was originally going to make some likely ignorant comments about the science of Interstellar but instead, we’ll be having our first guest contributor on the blog. Michael Tremmel, PhD Candidate in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Washington, will be giving us his assessment of the film’s science shortly.) I’m a […]

Nightcrawler (2014) – Dan Gilroy

Nightcrawler has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing. That is serious critical acclaim, and it’s hard not to look at that number and place some unfair expectations on a movie even when you go in as clueless as I like to (based on the poster above, I was expecting Drive). I […]