Image: Focus Features
Chris Luckett
Animated masterpieces are few and far between. There are a lot of really good animated films, but the truly brilliant works come along so rarely, they make you sit up and take notice, in a way only the best of cinema can. Kubo and the Two Strings, the latest stop-motion movie from animation studio Laika, is one such achievement.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
Chris Luckett
(Rest assured, ye wary of spoilers, there will be no specific spoilers in this review, shy of vague and ambiguous comments about the effect the final leg of the movie has on the whole.)
Interstellar is bound to draw comparisons to other movies, be they to Gravity, Sunshine, or Matthew McConaughey’s own Contact. Oddly enough, though, the movie it might remind you most of is Signs. And a good barometer for how you’ll feel about Christopher Nolan’s latest cinematic spectacle may well depend on how willing you were to accept the third-act developments in M. Night Shyamalan’s 2002 thriller.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
(This is Part 3 of a five-part series looking at the Oscar nominees in the eight major categories. Click here for Part 1 or Part 2.)
Chris Luckett
Ten lead performances are nominated for Academy Awards each year: five male and five female. This year’s batch includes some real heavyweights; despite two of them scoring first-time nominations, the ten actors and actresses up for Lead Performance Oscars have 38 Academy Award nominations between them.
Photo: Paramount Pictures
A year before The Wolf of Wall Street came out, Leonardo DiCaprio gave one of his best performances in Django Unchained, a three-hour movie that rarely took a wrong step for the first two-and-a-half hours, but went on for 30 minutes too long. The Wolf of Wall Street suffers from the same affliction.
Photo: Focus Features
Chris Luckett
Matthew McConaughey doesn’t get enough credit. Yes, he’s done his share of stinkers like Sahara, but he’s also done gems like A Time to Kill and Contact. Over the last few years, McConaughey has refocused himself and delivered a string of complex performances in The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Magic Mike, and Mud. His acting in Dallas Buyers Club is the apex of his career so far.
The Apple Box 