Directed by: Richard Linklater In our last “Of Note” we discussed the Academy Award winner for Best Picture, Birdman, starring Michael Keaton and written and directed by Alejandro Iñárritu. Most people believe that the only challenger to Birdman’s Oscar triumph...

Directed by: Elizabeth Banks In my last post I praised a movie that has been little seen, but is a superb example of how to do teen comedy, a movie called Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. It was superb in every way (except the horrible, though accurate, title). See it...

Directed by: Cameron Crowe Yes. It is as bad as everyone says it is. Aloha, the new film by Cameron Crowe, writer and director of Almost Famous, Say Anything, and his best, Jerry Maguire, has given us another clunker like his Elizabethtown and We Bought a Zoo. Our...

Directed by: Colin Trevorrow Poor Steven Spielberg. In the featurette for Jurassic World, essentially a remake of Jurassic Park, Spielberg, who was an Executive Producer on this film, says two things that must have been hard for him to say. The first is...

Directed by: Bill Pohlad There is so much bathos in the world that it is really refreshing to see a sad story with a happy ending, which rises above its potentially sickening melodrama and sincerely moves the heart. I am glad to say that Love & Mercy, the story of...

Directed by: Paul Feig Spy is one of those movies that saddens me. Hilariously funny, the script by Paul Feig, who also directed, often achieves its humor by using cheap tricks. Those tricks involve foul—usually scatological or sexual—cursing, sleazy imagery, and...

Directecd by: Boaz Yakin In one of my favorite films, The Shawshank Redemption, there is a scene in which Andy Dufresne sits down at the lunch table with the other convicts just after he has been released from two weeks in solitary confinement. He says it was the...

Directed by: Rick Famuyiwa Dope is an angry, at times ugly, at times funny slice-of-life drama about life in the hood. This time the hood is the area of Watts known as “the bottoms” where Malcolm, a geek who loves nineties’ hip-hop, makes good grades and wants to go...

Directed by: Brett Haley Old folks movies didn’t all used to be comedies about broken down hotels in India or exotic restaurants being produced in exotic places in Europe. Cocoon (1985), for example, starred Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley, Jessica Tandy, Maureen...

Directed by: Pete Docter Latest in the Pixar pantheon of kid’s movies made for adults, Inside Out takes a bold step into the world of the inner life, creating a mythical headquarters inside the head of Riley, a hockey playing girl from Minnesota. At the controls of...