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 […]

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 […]

Gone Girl (2014) – David Fincher

Gone Girl is the type of film that is right up David Fincher’s alley, the man who authored Seven, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as Nick and Amy Dunne, the film is a seeming whodunit when Nick returns home and discovers his wife is missing […]

Sanjuro (1962) – Akira Kurosawa

I really, really wish I had watched this movie before last week. It sat on my shelf for about three and a half years, the first movie I bought sight unseen based purely on the strength of its predecessor Yojimbo (they came together in a boxed set). I’m not sure what kept me from watching […]