Dustin Jansick's Movie Reviews
All movie reviews written by Dustin Jansick
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American Hustle
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 Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from 2012’s Silver Linings Playbook. His...
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Out of the Furnace
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 that the biggest surprise of the film is just how...
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The Spectacular Now
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 Spectacular Now. This time around the theme is buried underneath...
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Qwerty
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 destined to be together. Although the results of the film...
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This Is Martin Bonner
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 Tomorrow, A Teacher, among others). Because the film is remarkably...
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Enough Said
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 James Gandolfini’s recent death. But I am pleased to stand...
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Paradise: Hope
The last installment of the Paradise trilogy is Ulrich Seidl’s Paradise: Hope, a coming-of-age film about a teenage girl who develops a crush on a doctor at a camp for overweight teens. Although this film is by far Seidl’s...
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Inside Llewyn Davis
The latest creation from masterminds Joel and Ethan Coen is about a folk musician named Llewyn Davis; a couch surfing cat-lover with a full beard who rarely is without his guitar, and is more concerned with being an artist...
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Lenny Cooke
How is it possible that the #1 high school basketball player in America never ended up playing in the NBA? You probably never even heard of his name before. The documentary Lenny Cooke attempts to answer this question by...
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Humano
With such a philosophical subject as trying to discover the reason for our existence, Humano is indeed as heady of an experimental study as it sounds. At one point the filmmaker, Alan Stivelman, takes hallucinogens while pondering if the...