Dear Ricky,
You are an unassuming and simple yet remarkably powerful story. Your single mom Katie is a chemical plant worker that leads a pretty conventional life raising her seven-year-old daughter. Things change...
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Dear Silver Linings Playbook,
There is a risk inherent in creating a movie whose principle drama revolves around mentally ill characters. The risk is that, when viewed from the outside and portrayed by a supposedly sane actor, all...
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Dear Anna Karenina,
When a film takes the subtext of its source material and makes it text the result will often blunt the final product, making what had been a nuanced narrative aspect a stultifying point of banal...
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Dear Rust and Bone,
Certain films create a sense of loss and uncertainty in the viewer. The average film puts a bomb under a seat, sets a hero to defuse the bomb and throws obstacles in his way. This ticking clock plot...
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Dear Hide Away,
When I met you on that great lake shoreline – a land lubber in a suit buying a sailboat with little to say – I knew you were one of those deceptive films that speaks volumes to the heart with but a few...
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Dear Like Someone In Love,
In the theater of our own lives, we are the protagonists. We follow ourselves, identify with ourselves, and become invested in the outcomes of our own actions. Thus, we must assign to the other people...
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Dear Jack the Giant Slayer,
There’s an unsavory expectation regarding a movie that opens at the beginning of March featuring an untested, up-and-coming screen presence alongside storied-but-unreliable supporting players and...
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Dear Beautiful Creatures,
When I first glimpsed you, I admit it was with a purely condescending attitude. You did win the February poll for worst film over the highly vilified comedy Identity Thief. The fact that some wanted to...
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Dear Dead Man Down,
Every movie begins in uncertainty, teaching the viewer how to watch it as it moves forward. Some movies have a steep learning curve, while some hedge so closely to the openness and readability that we...
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Dear To the Wonder,
Love in film is often portrayed as a binary system. Love is present, or it is not. Love is reciprocated, or it is unrequited. Love is alive, or love is dead. This system of “yes” or “no” creates in the...
View ArticleDear Upstream Color (Rick’s Take),
As your reality unfurls itself in the beginning, I pause at your one-quarter point watching Kris (Amy Seimetz) sleeping and am undeniably intrigued, though undoubtedly unmoved! You are still an unknown...
View ArticleDear Before Midnight,
The unfulfilled promise of something wonderful is hard to bear. Embracing the beginning of something you’ve always wanted but never dreamed you would have is frightening. Ending the same is...
View ArticleDear Before Midnight (Rick’s Take),
In the storied history of this vision of two people and their life and love, the high note it starts on with Before Sunrise, represents an epiphany of the human heart and a bold examination the force...
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Dear Byzantium,
The vampire genre has been getting a lot of bad press lately; primarily from the form’s recently focus on gauzy romantic notions and overwhelming camp. What was once the terrifying embodiment of thirst...
View ArticleDear Certified Copy (Rick’s Take),
When you immerse me deep in the everyday of such a breathtaking French woman, I find that I am swept away in this intimate European film in a way that is almost effortless. With a barely inferred and...
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Dear Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,
There is a very rare and specific kind of cinematic alchemy, one which takes the sciences of cinematography, editing, performance, script, score, and story and uses them into a conjure a complete...
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Dear Her,
The concept of what love is becomes infinitely complicated the moment you introduce the two subjects of its existence. Any two individuals who fall in love must confront the basic fact that their...
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Dear Her (Rick’s Take),
As I am dropped into your near-future I am instantly comfortable meeting the evolved Theodore (brilliantly handled by Joaquin Phoenix.) He has an interesting job writing touching letters for clients...
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Dear The Grand Budapest Hotel,
The last time I reviewed a movie by your director, Wes Anderson, the result was an ad hoc defense of his stylistic choices melded with praise for his emotional and narrative acuity. Now, with you, The...
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