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 […]

The Interview (2014) – Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg

Well, I lived to write this review. Despite of the threats aimed at movie theaters that dared to screen The Interview, I summoned the courage to watch it, and I came out unscathed. To be fair, I watched it in the comforts of my own living room for $6.99 on YouTube, but I digress. After […]

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 […]

Ida (2014) – Pawel Pawlikowski

Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida is one of the most quietly powerful films of the year. It is a detective story, road movie, and a coming-of-age narrative wrapped concisely into 82 minutes. Set in 1961 Poland during the Stalinist dictatorship, Ida centers on Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska), a young orphaned woman who was sheltered in a convent since she […]

Inherent Vice (2014) – Paul Thomas Anderson

If I ever needed a psychedelic trip without turning to drugs, then watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice would do the trick. Anderson’s latest film feels like a synthesis of Boogie Nights and The Master, borrowing the wit and slapstick comedy of the former while retaining the abstraction and intellectual masturbation of the latter. To […]

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. […]

The Imitation Game (2014) – Morten Tyldum

The Imitation Game has been quite a crowd-pleaser because it is both a satisfying thriller and a poignant biopic. Taking the center stage of the film is Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), an idiosyncratic and socially awkward British mathematician and prodigy. Turing was hired to crack Nazi Germany’s Enigma, a code used by the Germans for […]

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 […]

Birdman (2014) – Alejandro Gonzalez Innarritu

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) is an audacious film. It was designed to make it seem like the entire movie was shot in one take, when in fact it is a series of long, uninterrupted scenes seamlessly spliced together. Shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, who won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in last […]