Eddie Redmayne

‘The Danish Girl’ feels like a collection of dramatic vignettes rather than a unified statement

  87 years into the ceremony, the Oscars are still unabashedly about the movies. Host Neil Patrick Harris along with Anna Kendrick performed a whizzbang ode to “moving pictures” in perfect Broadway musical style. And despite the fresh songwriting that seemed to give a nod to last year’s winners for Frozen and “Let it Go”, …

In an Oscar column in the New York Times several weeks back, A.O. Scott noticed that the Academy loves to champion three different types of narrative: those that affirm the industry’s political values and virtues, those that represent popular success, and those that feel like “auto-cinephilia”. “Three of the last five Best Picture winners were …

That sound you’re hearing is a massive sigh of relief from David Lynch. He no longer holds the dubious distinction of producing the most expensive B-movie in the history of Hollywood. That honor now belongs to The Wachowskis, whose Jupiter Ascending has officially displaced Dune at the top (or bottom) of the heap. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, however. Jupiter Ascending not only looks spectacular, it’s a laugh riot. Ridiculous dialogue, hammy performances, and enough mythology to baffle Zeus make this disaster a must-see for all lovers of cheese.

As a humble film critic, one can’t pretend to guess at the theory of everything in respect to the physical forces of the Universe. However, there may be a theory of everything concerning biopics, since, as The Theory of Everything demonstrates, they can’t help but all seem exactly the same. Surely, the uniform execution of tropes in storytelling, production, and acting across disparate movies point to the presence of some law underlying reality. Either that or biopics just make people really, really lazy.

The Hype Cycle is News Editor Brian Welk’s roundup of industry news, reviews and predictions of everything Oscar, boiled down into weekly power rankings of the buzziest and most likely contenders in this year’s awards season. The Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award has been one of the most reliable barometers for both Best …

My Week with Marilyn Written by Adrian Hodges Directed by Simon Curtis UK/USA, 2011 My Week with Marilyn’s key strength, and obvious biggest point of interest for most viewers, is Michelle Williams’ turn as Monroe. Williams excels at portraying various facets of Monroe’s star image omnipresent in pop culture, but the quality of the performance …