13 Hours may just be Michael Bay’s best recent film, but considering Bay’s track record this is not high praise. The film is functional and clearly designed to pick at our nation’s the still-fresh scars from the attack on our embassy in Benghazi, but overall it lacks heart and cohesive visual storytelling. The film focuses on a group of private …

At the start of the new year, The Forest brings a few things that we haven’t seen much of in film. For some of you who have read my reviews before, you may understand how important that is to me. The movie world needs fresh stuff to keep things moving into the future, but it also still requires all of …

A truly great film works on multiple levels. With each viewing you notice newness within the frame that you had not seen before. This is not to say that great films need be complicated. Anomalisa itself is quite simple, but its beauty is in its simplicity. The latest film by Charlie Kaufman, with co-director Duke Johnson, is stop-motion animation using …

A western set in a snowy environment with eight murderous types of personalities could make for an interesting story. There’s bound to be violence and mayhem all over, but there has to be something else included to give it all the value it deserves. Unfortunately, this is where The Hateful Eight fails first. Sure, there’s violence and stuff, but there’s …

Beyond blatant social and political flubs, one of the worst offenses a film can commit is assuming its audience is made up entirely of idiots. Films that talk down to the audience, or over explain the plot, feel like having a conversation with a person who is certain they are smarter than you and want you to know it. They …