2015 was most certainly the seminal year for veterans actresses having their moment in the spotlight with lead roles in acclaimed films. Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, Blythe Danner in I’ll See You in My Dreams, Dame Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van, and perhaps most interestingly, Lily Tomlin in Grandma. I have…

“Randomness is very difficult to achieve”, or so says Stéphanie, the love interest to our main character, Stephane, in the gloriously weird and absolutely wonderful surreal comedy The Science of Sleep (La Science des rêves). Michel Gondry has proven himself to be a remarkable director of surreal and mind-bending comedies that both serve as entertaining…

In 2013, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio teamed up for a film that would show the seedy underbelly of the world of stockbrokers in their masterpiece dark comedy, The Wolf of Wall Street. It was a roaring success, and it was both an outrageously entertaining but also very informative and fascinating film – and it…

It was once said that a great movie always seems new when you watch it. There are a small but powerful group of films that I rewatch constantly, and what amazes me about these films are how I always find something refreshing and new about them – I still watch the story unfolding with the…

I need to be perfectly honest here – I cannot understand why a film was made about Joy Mangano. She did invent the Miracle Mop, something that did change household cleaning, and many other patented items. Fair enough, the story of how a woman rises from living poverty to being the head of a powerful…

In 2013, Noah Baumbach, quite arguably the greatest director of independent comedies working today, teamed up with his girlfriend and fellow independent film veteran Greta Gerwig for Frances Ha, a film that reminded us that independent cinema is a truly unique art form, and one of the most tricky but rewards sub-genres of cinema to…

It’s a tradition at this time of year to watch a different Christmas special. I considered The Star Wars Holiday Season, but I made a grand total of seven minutes into it before considering jumping off a tall building. Instead, I chose to watch the Christmas special that puts one of my favorite performers front…

I have a strange feeling many people will avoid this film because it is a raunchy comedy with a ton of dirty jokes and some very explicit content – the same people that avoided films like The Hangover and Bridesmaids. The problem is that while Trainwreck does contain some very colorful and crude humor, it…

There are two kinds of independent films – those that keep to the pre-determined structure of a film, which is the most popular – think of the nihilistic dialogue, the quirky characters and the offbeat humor. Then you get the independent films that try to revolutionize independent cinema altogether. Tangerine fits into the latter category,…