It might be growing redundant to hear film critics repeat the line "one of the best of 2016" with every review they publish this time of year, but that's the nature of the beast, blame the studios for waiting until November and December to release their Oscar hopefuls. As is often the case, since the directors, writers, and actors involved are all top talents, these films are actually as good as they are advertised to be, leading to us as critics heaping praise of everything we publish as the weather gets colder. I attempt to throw in a few caveats; perhaps top ten, as of now, solid for the season, waiting for others before final judgement....Read the entire review

It's been 10 years since Arnold has done any movies except the worst movies in the world. And by that, of course, I mean The Expendables series. Oh, and he also did a few other terrible action movies that only genre aficionados could enjoy. No, the famous actor/politician hasn't been doing anything serious lately, although you could argue that he never has. So Maggie comes as a surprise, especially when you hear the premise. It's a zombie movie, which means a ton of action, walking dead, and badassery, right? Nope, the opposite. Maggie is a drama through & through, a dark one that, a highly introspective & sensational...Read the entire review

The Skeleton Twins is the tale of two siblings who inherited a morbid sense of humor from their father, only to have that same dark outlook make things difficult in later life.

Former SNL castmates Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader, who previously played a married couple onscreen in Adventureland, star as Maggie and Milo. After ten years apart, the two are reunited when Milo, following a bad breakup and other general life disappointments, attempts suicide. Maggie brings him back home to the upstate New York burg where they grew up, hoping it will help him get his head straight. The visit only proves to dig up past hurts and shine a light on just what screwed-up adults the kids turned out to be. M...Read the entire review

There is no other way to begin this review than to talk about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. In February 2014, Hoffman was found dead in his apartment, having been killed by a lethal mix of addictive drugs. His addictions were not secret, but his problem was considered to be under control, and it was a shock both to his family & to the cinematic world that he had died at the age of 46. To me, it was upsetting to know that I would never watch one of my favorite actors on screen again after his final films were released. He was a huge part of constructin...Read the entire review

Modern spy movies that deal with the general complexities of international espionage and practices established during the Cold War that don't have a James Bond-type central agent at their core can often be frustrating for audiences. They tend to be complicated, messy, and have little consequence in terms of narrative outcome. The Coen Bros. parodied this perfectly a couple of years ago with their marvelous comedy Burn After Reading. It's essentially several reels of people running around screwing one another over, all for no good reason, just to be filed away in a manila folder in a gray filing cabinet somewhere deep in a government building.

Anton Corbijn's John Le Carré adaptation A Most Want...Read the entire review

Joe is one of those films that should make us all mad at Nicholas Cage. The running gag that he makes terrible choices to star in worse and worse movies needs to end. Complex indie dramas like this one should be more dominant on his resume, because Joe reminds us all just how good of an actor Cage can be.

Joe is a middle-aged man getting by in the American South. He runs a crew that goes out into the woods and poisons trees so that lumber companies can plant new product. The law says they can't get rid of the old growth if the trees are healthy. These men expl...Read the entire review

On a recent episode of Marc Maron's "WTF" podcast, actress Gillian Jacobs (TV's Community) told the story of how seeing Kenneth Branagh's sunshiney 1993 film adaptation of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing was one of the first times she knew how badly she wanted to be an actress. Emma Thompson's charming and vivacious turn as the sharp-tongued Beatrice probably inspired more than one little girl to be an actress, and though Joss Whedon's new version of this very old play takes a different, more modern approach, it's not hard to imagine the next Gillian Jacobs watching this tale of love and red...Read the entire review

"Such a kind little man," says the hotel guest, of Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close), the headwaiter. Prim and proper, Albert is quiet, introverted, hard-working. He's also a woman, masquerading as this man for decades, stashing away every pence he's earned. He dreams of owning a shop--a tobacconist's, perhaps, with a parlor in the back for tea and a girl working the counter. Ah yes, a girl. A wife. That's where it gets complicated.

Glenn Close first played the role of Albert on stage all the way back in 1982, in a play based on George Moore's 1927 short story "The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs." She spent a decade and a half trying to get a film version made (she's credited as a producer, as well as co-writer of the screenplay with John Banville), and it's not hard to see why--this...Read the entire review

THE PROGRAM

With a bigger production budget and a bigger marketing campaign, "The Music Never Stopped" could have been a moderate hit. Instead, slapped with a tiny theatrical release, likely due to the low-budget look of the film, it finds its way on DVD, where hopefully it will find the audience it deserves. On paper, it sounds trite and pandering, in short the story of a young man suffering from amnesia reuniting with his family after 20 years until a radical medical breakthrough gives a glimmer of hope for a bright future, like "Awakenings" before it, a strong cast and earnest nature elevate to the status of a genuinely good (not great) film.

The comparison to "Awakenings" is especially apt as like that film, "The Music Never Stopped" was based on real e...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

Everything Must Go confirms what Stranger than Fiction had previously hinted at. Will Ferrell has a very deep bag of tricks. He uses Dan Rush's directorial debut to give us a performance that is deeply nuanced and modulated. The film is a bittersweet tale about a flawed individual who must rebuild himself after being faced with the wreckage of his life.

Nick Halsey (Ferrell) is having one hell of a day. First, he loses his job. Then, he goes home to find all his stuff on the lawn and a 'Dear John' letter from his wife stuck to the front door. The common theme in all of this is his drinking. You see, Nick is a functioning alcoholic. He tried sobering up but has fallen off the wagon a few too many times in the recent past. He may or may not have engaged in some drunken escapades with a female co-worker resulting in his termination and the souring o...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:

When Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) comes home and finds all of his stuff on the lawn and the locks to his house changed, he buzzes the intercom and pleads, "Are you in there? If you are, can this happen another day?" It's not an unreasonable request; he's home from work early because he's been fired from his cushy executive job. It's because of his drinking problem (and a sexual harassment complaint stemming from it). She's not inside, though; she's left him, for good this time. He surveys the accumulation of items spread across the lawn, and decides to have a seat and finish his beer.

There's a lovely sense of melancholy in these, the opening scenes of Everything Must Go, writer/director Dan Rush's adaptation of the Raymond Carver short story "Why Don't You Dance." As Nick, partially due to circumstance and partially due to stubbornness, is unable to remove his co...Read the entire review

THE FILM

"The Last Godfather" is "The Godfather" after eating a bucket of paint chips and huffing a can of gasoline. A slapstick send-up of mafia movies from the man who gave the world "Dragon Wars," the picture is an unfunny, spectacularly tedious collection of dreadful ideas meant to pass as a wild good time. Instead of laughs, the feature will have viewers scrambling for the eject button and reconsidering the competency of the Korean film industry.

Don Carini (Harvey Keitel) is ready to step down as head of his criminal empire, passing over trusted enforcers such as Tony (Michael Rispoli) and Macho (John Pinette) to hand the reins to his Korean son, Younggu (Hyung-rae Shim), a mentally impaired man abandoned long ago. A bumbling idiot, Younggu is educated in the ways of criminal life, making a mess wherever he goes. Piquing the interest of Nancy (Jocelin Donahue), Yo...Read the entire review

Man, I'm like...what?

There are times when this job is just a pain. When I probably would have stopped a movie before it was done and just walked away. When I can't, and so I have to instead come into my office and try to figure out something to say, and it's just not there.

The Future has inspired one of those times. It's the new film from performance artist/author Miranda July, who made half a good movie back in 2005 called Me and You and Everyone We Know. That movie chronicled the twee romance between two average people and the growing pains of a pair of children, and it had moments of true insight (the kids) and other moments of contrived oddness (the romanc...Read the entire review

People do not respond mildly to the work of Miranda July. Some find her a remarkable and unique voice; others find her films intolerable, overly mannered and self-conscious. I suspect that part of the reason that she evokes such fierce reactions is that people aren't quite sure what to make of her--her films (The Future is the long-awaited follow-up to her breakthrough picture, Me and You and Everyone We Know) are so unlike anything we've seen before that we don't have a pre-conditioned response to them to call up. In seeing other movies, we respond fairly quickly to elements we recognize and like (or dislike), and that sets the table for the rest of our experie...Read the entire review

Nim the chimp was born in 1973 at the Institute for Primate Studies in Oklahoma. A few days later, he was taken from his mother Carolyn and placed in the care of Stephanie Lafarge, a graduate student of Columbia University professor Herb Terrace. Nim would be the object of Terrace's language experiment, which theorized that, if treated like a human infant, a chimpanzee could learn to communicate like one--the "nature vs. nurture" argument, tested in an extended family. Glancing at the promotional materials, I presumed Project Nim would begin and end with the experiment. I was very, very wrong.

Nim's story is told by director James Marsh and producer Simon Chinn, whose previous documentary collaboration was the masterful Oscar-winner Man On Wire. (Marsh also directed Read the entire review