It’s been five years since we last met up with Hiccup, the clumsy but remarkably brave young warrior who best friend is Toothless, a sweet yet ferocious dragon. The two live in Berk, a vast land shared by Vikings and hordes of dragons, who now live in harmony. A ruthless dragon hunter named Grimmel threatens […]
CAROL New Movie Review
The opening image of Carol is a close up of a street grate. As the camera pulls back, we take in the rich, longstanding patterns that make up this small but integral part of the landscape and the film begins from there to establish a world that is now alien to most: America in the […]
Best of the Wurst – The Best Films of 2015
It’s the end of the year, and that means another installment of the Best of the Wurst–what I thought were the best films of 2015. Enjoy! Love & Mercy I fell hard for this Brian Wilson rock and roll bio the first time I saw it, at the opening night of last summer’s Maui Film […]
TRUTH New Movie Review
The 60 Minutes scandal of 2004, dubbed “Rathergate,” is now a motion picture, ironically titled Truth. The film depicts how Rather and his team investigated and reported a story on President George W. Bush’s military record, which had sketchy source material and a few tell-tale flaws (the superscript button on our keyboards suddenly had their […]
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 New Movie Review
While the 2010 CG animated film How to Train Your Dragon quickly became a beloved family film, I wasn’t entirely in its corner. The human characters just weren’t as interesting as the wild menagerie of dragons on display. In fact, none of the humans held my attention as much as Toothless, the little dragon who […]
THE MONUMENTS MEN New Movie Review
Empowerment isn’t a quality often linked to World War II stories and it can be thrilling to see soldiers take action against Hitler’s army in a way unfamiliar to most. The historically accurate “gimmick” of the masterful, underrated Valkyrie was portraying a group of German soldiers plotting to assassinate Hitler. Even though the end of […]