It’s been an outstanding 2015 for Pixar. Coming just months after the studio’s conceptually elaborate and ingeniously inventive Inside Out is the more traditional, poetic and pure The Good Dinosaur. The former is a dazzling exploration of the human mind, the latter an agrarian ballad of the soul. Directed by Pete Sohn, The Good Dinosaur flips the classic boy-and-his-pet tale on its head with an odd role reversal: the towering beast is the talkative one, his human sidekick a non-speaking, mangy, doglike traveling partner. Still, the story’s mostly rooted in convention, fueled by good-natured, broad comedy and familiar life lessons to any and all Disney fanatics. It doesn’t break new ground in the same ways Inside Out does, but in the realm of visual artistry and craftsmanship, The Good Dinosaur is king.

Before any of the characters say a word, we get a demonstration of just how insane(ly talented) the digital artists at Pixar really are. Lush landscapes are blanketed by golden sunshine, shadows cast by the plants and animals living in tranquil harmony. It’s unmistakably our world (it’s breathtakingly convincing, really), but with a twist. As the movie opens we see earth 65 million years ago, around the time of the dinosaurs’ extinction. Rather than colliding with big blue, it whiffs and zooms onward into the cosmos, birthing an alternate timeline in which dinosaurs rule the planet for millions of years to come.

With knobby knees and an endearing lack of coordination, our leaf green apatosaur hero, Arlo (Raymond Ochoa), is welcomed into the world by Momma (Frances McDormand) and Poppa (Jeffrey Wright), hard-working farmers who hope he and his siblings, Libby and Buck, will help them tend to the family’s land for generations to come. This first portion of the story feels the most familiar, with the kids learning responsibility by plowing the fields and feeding the chickens at the foot of a toothy mountain range, the teeming landscape looking a lot like the American Northwest.

Arlo’s a bit of a runt and has an issue with fear, an undesirable trait Poppa’s determined to stomp out by taking him on a hunting mission, their target a young human “critter” who keeps stealing from the family’s corn harvest. A dark storm builds during their riverside pursuit, and Poppa tragically gets swept away by a flash flood, Mufasa-style. The family mourns, and just a short time later, Arlo sees the critter swiping corn yet again. He pursues with vengeance on his mind but, like his father, he gets swept away by the river’s current, leaving him stranded miles from home. His unlikely companion on his journey home is the critter, Spot (Jack Bright), a homo sapien who scrambles around on all fours and barks and snarls at anything of interest (Looney Toon the Tasmanian Devil comes to mind). Together, the once-enemies learn to trust one another as they search for home, meeting colorful allies and baddies along the way.

Mother nature is unquestionably the star of the show, arguably taking precedence over Arlo and Spot. There’s a strong sense that nature is the be-all-end-all, this enormous, beautiful, unfathomably powerful thing that the characters are at the mercy of at any given moment. Many movies cast our planet as a pretty backdrop, nothing more. But the folks at Pixar are more thoughtful than that, invoking the almost religious reverence of the great outdoors of classic great plains westerns and the films of Werner Herzog. Dinosaur feels most like a western when Arlo and Spot meet a family of t-rex buffalo herders, led by a grizzly, slow-talkin’ patriarch, played by the most popular cowboy thesp of the moment, Sam Elliott (the designers cleverly fashion the characters’ top teeth to resemble the actor’s signature snowy ‘stache).

The movie’s got a lot on its mind, touching on themes of family, loss, fear, and even the timeless battle between herbivores and carnivores: early on, Spot scavenges for animals and grubs for Arlo to eat, all of which repulse the long-necked plant eater. Eventually, they bond over their shared love of fresh berries and even share a moment where they wordlessly consider the value of fresh fruit. What’s problematic is that the film only touches on these ideas and doesn’t follow through in a fulfilling way, save for the main theme regarding Arlo finding courage in compassion. The story also seems to be leaning towards a message of chosen family, but that all gets undone in the end when Arlo and Spot make a heartbreaking decision that, while emotionally wrenching, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

These issues are easier to swallow when you consider how touchingly the characters’ friendship is developed. The movie’s most tender moment involves Arlo and Spot using sticks and lines drawn in the dirt to express to each other the hurt they feel for their lost loved ones. It’s nice to have a movie come along every once in a while that lets its characters shut up for a minute and appreciate their surroundings. The Good Dinosaur is more humble than Pixar’s typical fare, choosing to refine and riff on familiar ideas and themes rather than build new ones from the ground up and live on the cutting edge. It doesn’t feel hip and new, but timeless and classical, like movies from Disney Animation’s ’90s glory days.

You couldn’t ask for two actors better suited to play a couple of sharp-featured, hipster vampire lovers than Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston, two actors who’ve hit the absolute peak of coolness at this point in their respective careers. And who better to direct them than Jim Jarmusch, the indie godfather who always seems to be ahead of the curve stylistically, speeding down the roadway we call cinema in his own lane? Sadly, Jarmusch falls behind the curve in Only Lovers Left Alive, a tiresome love story that’s too fascinated with cleverly subverting (it thinks) vampire lore to say anything truly interesting. Is Jarmusch’s exercise in aimless chatting a unique take on bloodsucker cinema? Yes. But he so aggressively concerns himself with subverting the myth that film becomes burdened by it.

Hiddleston plays Adam, an underground indie musician who lives in the forgotten American wasteland of Detroit, swimming in vinyl records, antiquated electronics, and vintage guitars dropped off at his grungy house by his innocent “zombie” (human) stoner buddy named Ian (a perfectly casted Anton Yelchin). His lover of centuries, Eve (Swinton), lives in Tangier, stuffing her nose in piles of dusty old books in every language and meeting with her old friend Marlowe (John Hurt) at a late-night cafe. (Yes, you can actually see hipster-stench wafting off of the screen.) Marlowe is irritated that he never got credit for writing Shakespeare’s plays, one of many obnoxiously presented wink-wink jokes about immortality aimed at fans of vampire fiction who have probably heard this stuff a million times.

Eve flies to Detroit to reunite with her precious Adam, and a steamy reunion it is–their passion for each other hasn’t dwindled a bit over the hundreds of years they’ve been canoodling all over the world. Hiddleston and Swinton sizzle, and their fiery scenes in close proximity are the film’s most engaging. The film slyly suggests that the world’s greatest artists were all members of a sort of vampire aristocracy, with Adam’s wall adorned with a gallery of portraits of supposed vamps (Buster Keaton, Joe Strummer, Mark Twain, Claire Denis, and others). Jack White even gets a shout out, as Adam and Eve drive by his childhood home on a nighttime drive through the city. The marriage of vampire lore with artistic icons is unique and intriguing at first, but it’s prodded and poked to death by incessant referencing.

It seems as if Jarmusch thought long and hard about how to represent vampire life in ways never seen before. He finds new angles. Adam and Eve get their blood in purified packets from doctors (the great Jeffrey Wright) and friends–human blood is so packed with impurities these days that sucking straight from the throat is a health risk. Their taste in the arts is so hyper-sophisticated because they’ve soaked up several lifetimes worth of music, books, and stage performance. Makes sense. Eve makes tasty Type-O blood popsicles, a culinary invention that seems pulled from the vampire section of Pinterest. These plays on the genre are clever, but add very, very little to the story at hand. Light chuckles at best.

But there isn’t much story to sink your teeth into, anyway. That’s not what Jarmusch is aiming for; leave that stuff to Stephanie Meyer. He’s defining the attitude of a culturally refined, endangered generation so repulsed by the vapid state of young people that they’re driven to the brink of suicide. (Adam has the eager Ian fetch him a wooden bullet, which he intends to off himself with. That is, until Eve shows up to perk him up and rekindle his will.) The film is perhaps more interesting as a piece hipster fiction, using vampirism as a metaphor to explain their endless love for old, tattered things.

As a hangout movie, Only Lovers is sometimes great, with Hiddleston and Swinton’s seductive repartee slipping off their tongues like melted butter. But again, vamp references distract and derail scenes often. The production design by Marco Bittner Rosner is luscious and brilliantly captured by Jarmusch (he’s a master at that). There are loads of edgy, stylish images throughout the film, like the opening shot of a starry night sky spinning and spinning until it takes the shape of a spinning vinyl record in Adam’s abode. Only Lovers Left Alive is one of Jarmusch’s most alluring films stylistically, but the self-conscious, often silly script makes it hard to fully indulge in its sensual wonders.

Only Lovers Left Alive trailer

George Clooney directs and stars in his latest film, The Ides of March, which focuses on people involved in American politics and the scandals that often come with them. The film also shows how people evolve in politics from a passionate driven nobody who legitimately believes in what they are doing to a position climber who only cares about gaining power. These are all things most already know so you are not likely to walk away with anything new but thanks to the excellent cast giving strong performances it is not a deal breaker.

It is one week from the Ohio Democratic primary, which is one of the most important primaries because normally it puts the winner in a position to win the party and thus in the running for president in the general election. Mike Morris (George Clooney) is a Democrat governor who is looking to win this primary. Along his sides are his senior campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his press secretary Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling).

An example of how brilliant Stephen is, he comes up with a plan that would mandate 18 year olds to do 2 years of service of some kind whether that be in the army or the Peace Corps and in return their college will be paid for. They know that is a bold plan to announce but they also know the voting demographic will be for it since it does not affect them and the age group it does affect is too young to even vote.

Stephen makes the mistake of agreeing to meet with Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), who is the running mates campaign manager. Tom tries to lure Stephen into jump ship from his current position and work for his guy Senator Pullman. Stephen declines and that is when Tom lets him know that the race is much closer than he thinks. Tom informs him that they are in position to capture North Carolina’s delegates from a deal with the governor.

Stephen lets his team know of the situation and Paul comes up with a plan. Walk away from Ohio immediately and take a loss and head over to North Carolina to offer the governor a higher position if Morris is elected for his endorsement vote. Morris does not go for it and decides to stick it out in Ohio.

Meanwhile, a young intern named Molly Stearns (Evan Rachel Wood) takes interest in Stephen. They meet up outside of work where it is admitted that she has wanted him for some time now. He knows that they must keep this a secret but what he does not know is that he will soon discover a secret that could end the campaign in a heartbeat.

The ensemble cast is comprised of a collection of well-seasoned actors and actresses. A group that you would expect great performances from and they fulfill those expectations. With a cast of; George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei, you just cannot go wrong in terms of performance.

Although the entire cast was great, the obvious stand out was Gosling. Watching his character development was my favorite quality of the film. You see Stephen changed from a guy who just wanted to win the polls to a guy that just wanted to get ahead in power.

If there is one thing you take away from The Ides of March it is that all politicians are dirty, even the ones you think are the good guys. Scandals are just the nature of being in politics, being under the microscope on everything you say and do does not help. It is nothing that most people did not already know which is why the storyline is fairly compelling but ultimately one that is not hard to predict how the scene would end once it had started.

Source Code is the sophomore feature of director Duncan Jones. It borrows the sci-fi aspect of his first film, Moon, and throws in a puzzle plot in this techno-thriller. The film was well-crafted, with only a slight plot-hole near the end, about a man who is in the same 8 minute time-loop trying to figure out who planted a bomb on a train. If The Matrix and Groundhog Day had a baby, Source Code would be it.

The film jumps right in with Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) waking up on a train, clearly confused by his surroundings. The woman (Michelle Monaghan) sitting across from him is in mid conversation with him. Adding to the confusion she insists that she knows him and repeatedly calls him Sean. In a desperate move to figure out what is going on, he goes to the bathroom only to find a face in the mirror that is not his, but rather Sean’s.

The opening 8 minutes of the film is one of the most intriguing first 8 minutes of recent film memory. The viewer is in the same boat, or in this case train, as the main character. We have no clue who Sean is, why he is all of a sudden on a train or who the women sitting across from him is. Well played.

As soon as Colter’s time on the train hits 8 minutes, the bomb goes off and the train explodes into flames. He awakes strapped inside some kind of metal capsule in a secret U.S. military experiment. In front of him are computer screens with a women named Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga) instruction him what to do.

Goodwin expresses how time is not on their side for this experiment but she does finally explain what exactly is going on. The commuter train explosion was caused by a bomb placed by someone on the train. Goodwin’s team was able to gain access into the brain of one of the passengers and able to re-create the last 8 minutes of his life before the bomb went off. From that they were able to build a simulation world that consists of those 8 minutes, they call it Source Code. It has The Matrix similarities abound, the most obvious is the alternate-simulation-world but also Goodwin basically being “the operator”.

His mission is to go back for the 8 minutes to try to locate the bomb and figure out who planted it. With this information they can capture the bomber to prevent an even larger attack that could destroy Chicago. Colter can go back multiple times but still only has the same time limit of 8 minutes. So needs to learn from each visit, Groundhog Day style, piecing the puzzle together.

A human element of emotions comes into play as Colter begins to form a relationship with some of the other passengers, most notably Christina, who we meet at the beginning of each new initialization of Source Code. Which means his mission just got expanded.

Just like in his first film, Moon, Duncan Jones relies heavily on one central character to do most of the heavy lifting. But to be fair, Gyllenhaal had a little more help than Sam Rockwell did. Gyllenhaal was a fantastic choice, he was solid in his role. Monaghan was maybe a little more replaceable, but that was more because of her role than her performance. Farmiga made a role that would normally be overlooked and played it very well.

The first two acts of Source Code far surpassed the relatively weak third act. The ending was safe and too Hollywood friendly, which is a bit of a shame because I do not think it needed to be. For the most part, the film remains a fast paced thriller with at least one bone-chilling turn-of-event scene. It is not as mind blowing as Inception, but that does not mean it is not worth a watch or two.