2015 Academy Award Nominations

Awards season is in full swing as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced the nominees for the Academy Awards this morning.  The standouts certainly are “Birdman,” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” which tied for 9 nominations. With 8 nominations, “The Theory of Everything,” follows in a close second, and “American Sniper,” with …

Film Review: Into the Woods

Into the Woods opens in wide release on Christmas Day, December 25th. Check your local listings for showtimes. Adapting stage musicals to the big screen is hard. While the screen may loom over the audience like some all-encompassing monolith, it still never feels big enough to capture the spectacle of live theater. Compounding the problem …

Film Review: Interstellar

I always look forward to Christopher Nolan’s films; his big-budget spectacles are thought-provoking, result in thorough discussion and analysis by viewers, such as the end of “Inception” and the tightly-woven web he created in “The Prestige.” From a review perspective, his films are also difficult to discuss without spoilers, but I’m always up for a …

Film Review: It Was You Charlie

It Was You Charlie is now available on iTunes. The short film seems like something of a right of passage for many filmmakers. Film school is littered with the reels of shorts of varying pretension and it is a learning process for the filmmaker to determine how best to construct and communicate his story. That …

Film Review: Frank

Frank opens in limited release August 22nd. Check your local listings for showtimes. No, the pictures are not a joke. The Frank of the film’s title is in fact a man who spends his life wearing a large fiberglass head. In its very concept, it is as if the film is proudly waving its freak …