The Favourite is Comedy Central's Another Period as art house satire, with the visual beauty and complexity of top of the crop luscious prestige costume dramas, directed by the surrealist master who brought you Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. In other words, it's a masterpiece, perhaps the most subversive and original piece of its kind since Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Stuffy period melodramas love to depict British royal figures and members of the aristocracy as eloquent and smart power players, Shakespearean icons worthy of respect and admiration. Barry Lyndon and The Favourite understands that, just like any other time in human history, perhaps even more so during times when coming out of the right vagina gave one the awesome powers and responsibilities of ruling an entire country, the world is full of incompetents, screw-ups, backstabbers, ...Read the entire review

At the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women, the first class of the charter school's lower-income scholarship students is preparing to graduate. As they debate which colleges to apply to and battle with fluctuating GPAs, many of the girls come together after school for a dance program known as Step, introduced by one of the seniors, Blessin, back when she was in sixth grade. This year, the girls hope to win a seasonal "DMV" (D.C.-Maryland-Virginia) competition at a nearby school, Bowie -- their last chance before they finish high school and move on to the next chapter of their lives.

As a basic document of the challenges that Blessin and her fellow students Cori and Tayla face in their last year of high school, Step is effective enough to get the viewer engaged with their personalities and goals. As a dramatic or emotionally engaging documentary, the movie feels more scattered, with ...Read the entire review

Seventeen years after the original Super Troopers, the long awaited sequel is here. I was 17 when the first movie came out, so I've doubled in age but I'm not sure about maturity; I guess Super Troopers 2 is here to help me find out. This comedy troupe is known for their idiotic humor, for their insensitive jokes, for their obsession with drugs and penises and guns and silly voices. I found that funny when I was younger, they became a bit of a cult sensation, but I was nervous about how their style would translate to modern times. After all, you could call Broken Lizard racist and sexist and tasteless, and I don't think you would hear many arguments. ...Read the entire review

I've said it before and I'll say it again; Wes Anderson is my favorite director. That's actually partially a quote from Ferris Bueller, which is one of my favorite films but isn't directed by Wes Anderson, but whatever. The point is, my website is called Archer Avenue for a reason and that reason is The Royal Tenenbaums and that movie is an Anderson masterpiece. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited, Read the entire review

A favorite to round out the Best Picture category at this year's Academy Awards, if perhaps not poised or projected to win, is The Shape of Water, the newest film from visionary director Guillermo del Toro. The term 'visionary' is thrown around like a frisbee, but every once in a great while it lands in the perfect spot, and I know no other filmmaker that deserves the label more than this man. He has created some of the most unique cinema of the last 15 years, and for that he has earned an over-used title and much, much more. Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth, Pacific Rim<...Read the entire review

The new film from writer-director Martin McDonagh, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, covers similar thematic ground to his first two feature films, In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. A horrific crime leads to a spiral of pain, anger, revenge, and violence that seems to beget only more pain, anger, revenge, and violence. But unlike the stylized gangster-world setting of McDonagh's earlier flicks, Three Billboards sets its action in an outwardly unassuming American small town.

Frances McDormand stars as Mildred Hayes, whose attitude is no-nonsense to the point ...Read the entire review

Natalie Portman will most assuredly be nominated for her third Oscar this year for her performance as Jacqueline Kennedy in the biopic event of the season, Jackie. Portman was nominated for Best Supporting Actress in 2005 for her role in Closer, and she won the award for Best Actress in 2011 for her role in Black Swan, one of the best films of the last twenty years, in this film critic's humble opinion. Is she on her way to another Oscar? Perhaps, and if so, she'll do it almost completely on her own, lacking the supporting cast, the famous director, the score of the century, and the dramatic thrills of a film in Bl...Read the entire review

When Fox bought the rights to film festival darling The Birth of a Nation for a record price, Nate Parker knew he had something special on his hands, and audiences knew that an indie Oscar contender was coming their way, right in time for the beginning of the fall Oscar season. Parker wrote, directed, and stars in this controversial drama, a film destined to be one of the most talked about releases of the year, whether it lives up to its award aspirations or not. Parker put himself on the line with this film, especially due to its uncomfortable nature, and then doubly so due to the resurfacing of his own criminal allegations. The Birth...Read the entire review

I recently watched The Town That Dreaded Sundown, a clever horror remake that was actually quite good, even beyond its ability to gross & freak out. It was crafted with an eye for detail and artistry, something that most movies in the genre completely ignore. It somehow gave us a classic feel with modern visuals, scaring of course, but impressing to. I bring it up because it happens to be the first film directed by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon. His second; Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It was complete chance that I watched these two movies in successio...Read the entire review

Reese Witherspoon has never been what you might call a big hitter. Sure, she's been around for years and we all feel like we know her, but she's the ultimate girl-next-door; not seen as a sex symbol but also not seen as this amazing actress. Perhaps it's the way she looks, the skinny girl with the pointy chin and the odd way of talking who seems precocious but not exactly hot. Or perhaps it's her choice of roles, with movies like Overnight Delivery, Legally Blonde, Sweet Home Alabama, Just Like Heaven, and Four Christmases turning us off from the fact that she has real ability. And she definitely does, just watch her in somethin...Read the entire review

Public battles over the final cut of a film are nothing new (just recently, Paul Schrader and his cast have begun a silent stand-off against the producers who took away his film The Dying of the Light), but one of the more protracted examples (albeit not a traditional stand-off between filmmaker and studio) was the editing process of Kenneth Lonergan's sophomore feature Margaret, which was slated for release in 2007, but would not reach screens -- 14 of them -- until 2011. Lonergan was contractually obligated to deliver a 150-minute version of the movie, but struggled to find a way to truncate a complicated web of thematic and emotional connections, centered around a young girl and her reaction to a terrible accident. Lonergan ran out of studio money, but kept working thanks to support from his friend and cast member Matthew Broderick. He weathered two lawsuits, one by Fox Searchlight...Read the entire review

It's almost Oscar time and the buzz is, well, buzzing. So far this year, the five best pictures I have seen, in no particular order, are: The Grand Budapest Hotel, A Most Wanted Man, Boyhood, Guardians of the Galaxy, and now Birdman. Each film has a strength and a weakness that could keep it from winning or from even getting nominated for Best Picture. Grand Budapest is visually & comically amazing, but it's a quirky Wes Anderson film, which the Academy doesn't seem to enjoy. Most Wanted Man is perfectly restrained, but lacks in-your-face dr...Read the entire review

"Did you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

That's the line that popped into my head as I left the theater after watching Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). It kind of arose spontaneously as I was wrestling with my initial reaction to a film that I feared had lost me in its final quarter. I was still hoping to maybe straighten those feelings out, to find whatever it was that was eluding me about how the story had turned out, but instead of the missing connection, I kept hearing, "Did you ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" At the time, I couldn't even place where it was I was lifting the question from. I punched it into Google when I got home, and up popped an infamous video of John Lydon exi...Read the entire review

Although it's been nearly 20 years since he last donned the cape and cowl, Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton) can't shake the spectre of Birdman, a superhero he played in a trilogy of films in the late '80s and early '90s before walking away from negotiations for a fourth over salary disputes. Now, he's staging an adaptation of Raymond Carver on Broadway, investing the last drops of his dwindling fortune in a passion project that appears to be falling apart hours before the first preview. In particular, Riggan is unhappy with his co-star, but the problem solves itself (or so it seems) when a light fixture falls on his head. With the help of his leading lady, Lesley (Naomi Watts), Riggan manages to book notorious perfectionist Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) as a replacement. Despite Mike's dizzying contract, Riggan's manager Jake (Zach Galifianakis) is thrilled as the preview sales explode within hours, and ...Read the entire review

The Drop was written by Dennis Lehane, first as a short story and then as a screenplay. The fact that it was not first crafted as a novel is an important distinction, since Lehane's other successes were. Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island; all Lehane books turned into movies, but with someone else doing the adapting. The stories speak for themselves and are always dark, twisted, gritty, sad, realistic, personal, and strong. But perhaps Lehane' talent doesn't lay is screenwriting. Mystic River, for example, is an exponentially better film than The Drop. The former capitalizes on great acting & a solid...Read the entire review

On a nightly basis, money changes hands across the criminal underworld. Deals are struck, goods are purchased, and bets are won and lost. At the end of the night, the cash has to end up somewhere, its last stop on the way to the big boss that will take the most off the top. This place is known as a drop bar, and in Brooklyn, the location changes day to day, the designated spot chosen at random. This is to keep the heat off any one specific bar and keep anyone foolish enough from getting the wrong idea about getting their hands on all that dough.

A robbery of one of those bars is one of the inciting incidents in The Drop, a new crime movie written by Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone) and directed by...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

The 1932 melodrama Call Her Savage proved an excellent vehicle for the original "It Girl," Clara Bow. Directed by John Francis Dillon (Man About Town) from a novel by Tiffany Thayer (Thirteen Women), it gives Bow the opportunity to be many things: the wild child, the heartbroken lover, the grieving mother, the bossy rich lady, and ultimately, the reformed woman.

Call Her Savage opens 18 years before the birth of Nasa Springer (Bow), as her grandfather leads a group of wagons across the American plains. The religious folks in the caravan blame granddad (Fred Kohler) for the bad fortune that befalls them. The Indian attack that leaves several traveller...Read the entire review

A priest and a man with a grudge walk into a confession booth. The priest opens the partition between and asks the man what he'd like to confess. The confessor tells the padre of the abuse he suffered by another member of the clergy, and how even if that despicable man hadn't already died, killing him wouldn't be satisfying as he was condemned and reviled anyhow. For people to really take notice, this fellow reasons, a legitimately good priest needs to die instead. The confessor with the grudge gives his counsel one week to put his house in order. Then that priest will be murdered.

This is the first scene of Calvary, the new film from John Michael McDonagh. It's the second part of a black comedy trilogy that started with the hilarious and tough-minded Read the entire review

With the extremely wide variety of films that Jude Law has starred in, you might think you've seen it all. After all, he was the biggest movie star on the planet for a time there in the early 2000s, crafting character after character, delivering unforgettable performances, and in his career has done just about every genre there is. He was a spoiled playboy in The Talented Mr. Ripley, a Russian war hero in Enemy at the Gates, a gigolo robot in A.I., an ugly assassin in Road to Perdition, a Southern soldier in Cold Mountain, a futuristic pilot in Sky Captain, and that's just in a span of five years. He'...Read the entire review

It's been said that film critics can't help but love Wes Anderson. I can't argue the point since I do in fact love him, or at least the majority of his work. But in my defense, I was a Wes Anderson fan before I ever dreamed of being an actual film critic. I saw The Royal Tenenbaums at a very formative time; right after I graduated high school. I was seventeen, not sure what to do with my life, and experiencing the adult world one impactful bit at a time. I chose film as a way to define my taste and artistic attitude, having grown up watching movies and always having been a crit...Read the entire review

The only thing more legendary than the Grand Budapest Hotel's reputation for excellence is the man who holds the hotel to that standard, concierge M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). The hotel is a palace that prides itself on a type of classiness that feels outre even in the early 1930s period during which Gustave's tenure took place, and Gustave himself is behind every last bit of it. Even while the hotel is surrounded by war and violence, his ideas of hospitality never waver, especially toward elderly female residents. One of the first-hand witnesses to Gustave's style is Zero Moustafa (Tony Revolori), the establishment's newest lobby boy. Zero quickly becomes one of Gustave's most beloved pupils, a relationship which makes him an unexpected participant in a madcap adventure when Gustave is willed a priceless painting named "Boy With Apple" by one of his favorite guests (Tilda Swinton), and her son Dimitri ...Read the entire review

I think we are officially in the second phase of Wes Anderson's career.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is nothing short of a delight. It is a sugary, multilayered confection, as colorful and complex and precariously stacked as the courtesans du chocolate that become an important plot point in the movie's narrative. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the sort of movie that you want to dig into wholeheartedly with the biggest spoon you can find, shoveling as much as you can into your mouth, but the more you dine on Anderson's decadent creation, the more you will want to dissect it and separate the parts and savor every flavor on its own.

The story, which is Anderson's homage to a semi-obscure writer named Stefan Zweig, is a story within a story within a story, narrated b...Read the entire review

No other movie is getting as much Oscar buzz as 12 Years a Slave. It seems tailor-made for a Academy Award; period piece, dramatic, social issue, big name actors. In past years this film would have been a shoe in to win Best Picture and probably Best Director as well. But in today's Academy, any movie can win. They've expanded the list of nominees from five to nine or ten, including many genres that aren't usually there. This year, it seems that there might be a couple films that could give this one a run for its money: Gravity, American Hustle, and perhaps Inside Llewyn Davis. I might not have liked ...Read the entire review

When I first saw the trailer for this movie it looked like it would be a mash-up of films that have come before: Little Miss Sunshine, Almost Famous, Adventureland. It didn't look extremely original, but I had hope that the classic coming-of-age story could be well done yet again as long as the actors held up their ends and the story didn't become amazingly cheesy. Thankfully, that's pretty much exactly what happened. The plot was fairly borrowed, but the characters added just enough new life to an old bit that the movie became loveable rather than laughable. The Way Way Back was...Read the entire review

I haven't heard so much sniffling from the critics row since Toy Story 3.

I say this not to trivialize or make light, but more to indicate, for as much as it seems like a lot of the critical establishment operate within one hive mind, it's uncommonly rare to witness them reacting in the same way to the same movie. Such was the case, however, with 12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen's powerful drama about an extraordinary individual from one of America's most shameful historical periods.

Solomon Northup was a black man living in freedom in upstate New York in the 1830s who, in 1841, was kidnapped by two men who had hired him for his fiddle-playing skills and sold as a runaway slave...Read the entire review