Snowpiercer
I really wanted to like this movie. It has a top notch cast with Chris "Captain America" Evans, Tilda "Chameleon" Swinton, Octavia "Oscar" Spencer, John "Gravitas" Hurt and Ed "Reliable"…
Me and You (Io e te)
There are a handful of directors whose names lead me to expect greatness. Bertolucci is definitely one of them. He has written and directed some of the most successful and…
Begin Again
Begin Again is all about the transformative power of music. In it a down on his luck, alcoholic ex-record company executive discovers a down on her luck songwriter and the…
Land Ho
Land Ho is a road movie, in which a couple of 60ish ex-brothers-in-law named Colin and Mitch head to Iceland to, as Mitch puts it, "Get their groove back." That…
AFI DOCS 2014 (Days 3&4)
The last two days of the festival I spent in AFI's Silver Spring theaters. All the films were shown in both the downtown DC venues and at the AFI home…
Ida
Ida is one of those extremely beautiful but ultimately depressing films. It is the story of an 18-year-old Polish orphan who was brought up by nuns and is about to…
AFI DOCS 2014 (Days 1&2)
As Arty Chick, I am a great lover of the documentary genre and this year's AFI DOCS in Washington, DC sated my docu-hunger quite well. As with any festival, there…
Citizen Koch
If you've never heard of the Koch Brothers, Charles and David, then this film could give you a bit of an introduction to the enormous power they currently wield in…
Chef
Written, directed and starring Jon Favreau, Chef is the feel good foodie flick du jour. Favreau stars as Carl Casper, a formerly hot young chef who's lost his mojo, but…
X-men: Days of Future Past
I will admit up front, I haven't seen any of the other X-men flicks. But the good news is that this one stands alone and begs me to watch the…
The Lunchbox
In this lovely little Indian chick flick, two lonely strangers meet through an accidental food delivery mix-up. Saajan is an accountant, a month away from early retirement when he starts…
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden
This documentary recounts the strange but true tale of a group of Europeans in the 1930s who decided to leave the insanity of the modern world behind and move to…
Finding Vivian Maier
A couple of years ago, an unknown but super talented street photographer's work started showing up in art blogs and around the net. The images shot between the 50s and…
Noah
I'm no biblical scholar, but I've heard the story of Noah and the flood a few times. I suspect there are not many who haven't. In a nutshell: "The Creator"…
The Grand Budapest Hotel
In his latest fabulously outrageous film The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson introduces us to Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes), the concierge to end all concierges who takes enterprising lobby boy…