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August: Osage County

August: Osage County

Broad and brutal, August: Osage County doesn’t offer much in the way of subtlety, but there’s something satisfying about indulging in the bigness of it all. The all-star cast, headed up by a bitch-mode Meryl Streep and a seething Julia Roberts, put up bombastic, larger-than-life performances. Which makes sense, since it’s based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy...

American Hustle

American Hustle

By Dustin Jansick

For American Hustle, David O. Russell assembles a cast largely comprised from his previous two crowd pleasing films, Christian Bale and Amy Adams from 2010’s The Fighter, and Bradley...

Caught in the Web

Caught in the Web

When Lanqiu (Gao Yuanyuan), a young Chinese executive with a promising future learns during a routine physical that she’s fatally ill, she becomes dreadfully upset and, in a lapse...

Out of the Furnace

Out of the Furnace

By Dustin Jansick

When you consider Out of the Furnace is packed with a star-studded cast and a director who demonstrated outstanding talent in his previous film (Crazy Heart), it is disappointing...

Reaching For the Moon

Reaching For the Moon

An examination of Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet Elizabeth Bishop’s pivotal years spent in Brazil in the 1950’s and ’60s, Reaching For the Moon is an ironically literal, trite, unpoetic biopic...

The Spectacular Now

The Spectacular Now

By Dustin Jansick

Considering James Ponsoldt’s first two films (Off the Black, Smashed) deal with alcoholism, it comes as no surprise that the subject is also baked into his third film, The...

Qwerty

Qwerty

By Dustin Jansick

Bill Sebastian’s Qwerty is a modest indie romantic comedy that does not attempt to be more than what it is—a cheerful love story about two social outcasts who were...

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom falls into several of the common pitfalls hindering biopics of the same ilk–most notably an artistically inhibiting obedience to biographical milestones–and while director Justin Chadwick...

Everyday

Everyday

By Colleen Munro

Michael Winterbottom is a director who’s not afraid to fully commit himself to an idea that he likes. Whether he’s teaming up with actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon...

The Selfish Giant

The Selfish Giant

After making the incredibly devastating pseudo-documentary The Arbor, Clio Barnard has returned with her own original story for The Selfish Giant. Loosely inspired by Oscar Wilde’s short story of...

This Is Martin Bonner

This Is Martin Bonner

By Dustin Jansick

Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner won the Best of NEXT Audience Award last year at the Sundance Film Festival, up against some fantastic competition (Computer Chess, Escape From...

Go For Sisters

Go For Sisters

A consistently intriguing figure in the independent film community, John Sayles is a sometimes brilliant, usually “meh”, filmmaker whose recent work leans more toward the “meh” side of the...

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

It’s been nearly a decade since Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy introduced Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay’s (then a newcomer) absurdist brand of humor to the masses, a...

Enough Said

Enough Said

By Dustin Jansick

I will shamefully admit that when I started to hear some of the buzz generated by Nicole Holofcener’s Enough Said, I figured much of it was simply due to...

Nothing Without You

Nothing Without You

Having taken a short break from independent films for a short while, I was able to watch Nothing Without You with a fresh set of eyes and an eagerness...

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