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Thunder Road is both a single-shot 13 minute short and a 91-minute feature-film expanding the story. Both are excellent and award-winning, but I really recommend the full experience! Jim Cummings (above) is the director, writer, and main actor of this dark comedy. He plays a police officer having the worst day of his life as […]

This movie is a complete no-brainer. It follows two assistants in busy New York City, both of them overworked and underpaid. They come up with a plan to set up their bosses (Set it Up) so that when their bosses finally take some personal time together, they could too. In a lot of ways, it’s […]

Two brothers played by Channing Tatum and Adam Driver decide to rob a local NASCAR event, the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina. They put together a team to help them, with Daniel Craig as the demolition expert and Katie Holmes as the gateway driver. Other big names behind this project are actors Seth MacFarlane […]

The Fundamentals of Caring is an offbeat comedy/drama starring Paul Rudd as a man attempting to overcome his looming divorce by becoming the caretaker for a teenager with muscular dystrophy (Craig Roberts, Submarine). The two develop an unconventional relationship based largely on sarcasm and profanity, delivering many laugh-out-loud moments, while also slowly exposing the pain […]

You know how, instead of condemning sexual violence, some people patronizingly advise women to go home early, move in groups for safety, and make sure to lock the door for safety? Stree takes this usual advice and uses it instead as fictional ritual practices for the men in the small town of Chanderi to escape […]

Dorky kid Greg Gaines (played by the brilliant and unlikely named Thomas Mann) has severe issues with closeness (he calls his best friend a “co-worker”) and is instructed by his mother to befriend Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a girl recently diagnosed with cancer. Far from being an indie tear-jerker, though, “this isn’t a touching romantic story”, […]

The Square is a peculiar movie about a respected contemporary art museum curator as he goes through a few very specific events. He loses his wallet, his children fight, the art he oversees is does not make sense to an interviewer… Each one of these events would usually require a precise response but all they […]

Based on Fredrick Backman’s 2012 best-selling book of the same name, this Swedish hit comedy-drama introduces us to Ove, an elderly man who feels like his life is over. After losing his wife, the short-fused retiree spends his days grumpily enforcing block association rules in his neighborhood. He is your typical unhappy, old neighbor, somebody […]

A funny, feel-good French movie about a man who joins a synchronized swim team to get over his depression. Comprised only of other middle-aged men, they decide they want to compete for the world championship. Sounds like an unlikely story? It’s actually based on a real-life documentary from Sweden called Men Who Swim. If you […]

Midnight Runners is a hilarious and action-packed buddy comedy that delivers both laughs and thrills in equal measure. The film follows two police cadets who find themselves embroiled in a dangerous conspiracy after witnessing a kidnapping. The chemistry between the two leads is electric, and their banter and antics provide some of the film’s funniest […]

This might just be the most insightful movie about men. Watch if you are a guy and you will cringe endlessly from seeing yourself in the characters, and if you are a girl  you should also watch it to laugh and understand the men around you better (yes, it is that insightful). Rob Gordon, a […]

While Shakespeare has written most of the romantic plays that dominate theater today, there was one play from across the English Channel that also keeps its hold in the public consciousness, namely Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Cyrano, My Love depicts the process of creating the iconic play a la Shakespeare in Love, that […]

The Station Agent is about loneliness, change and friendship. Sounds corny right? It’s not. The characters are developed, they have their own reasons for the choices they make and nothing feels forced, neither actions or conversations. It’s a small and wonderful movie about a little man that moves out of the city and his comfort […]

Told through a series of flashbacks and personal archival footage, Beginners gives us the story of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a 38-year-old graphic designer from Los Angeles, and his two parents across three timeframes. Oliver has never had a meaningful relationship. Six months after his mother dies, his father, Hal, played by the amazing, Academy Award-winning, […]

When it comes to being a drama with a cohesive and understandable message, Swing Kids falters, and doesn’t make it clear whether or not the film advocates for either pro-capitalist or pro-communist ideas– understandably so, considering how to this day, the peninsula remains split in part due to foreign intervention. The film is a bit […]

Mary and Max is the tale of an overlooked 8-year-old girl from Australia starting an unlikely friendship via mail with a middle-aged Jewish man from New York. Shot completely in monocromatic claymotion, it is the first feature film by Australian stop-motion animation writer, Adam Elliot, and the first ever animated film to score the opening […]

A wealthy paraplegic needs a new caretaker. His choice is surprising — an ex-con down on his luck. Both of their lives are changed forever. Based on a true story, it is funny, touching, and very surprising.  It will have you rolling on the floor laughing one minute and reaching for your hankie the next. Intouchables is one […]

It might seem like a no-brainer that trying to make a comedy movie featuring a character with cancer is not a great idea. And while there may be a good share of failed attempts in that category, 50/50 is not one of them. And then it might come as a surprise that this subtle attempt […]

While billed as a “ramen western”, Tampopo satirizes plenty of other American genres, including, but not limited to: 1) the inspirational sports film, with Tampopo’s diligent training, 2) the erotic, arthouse drama through its egg yolk kiss, 3) the witty, social comedy pointing out the absurd in dinnertime tables, and 4) the melodramatic mafia romance […]

This Oscar winner is an offbeat romantic comedy that still feels like a standard romantic comedy! It’s best that you go into it without many expectations, because many people enjoy it for different reasons and it’s best if you find your own. It’s also a movie that needs to be seen as a whole, despite having so many […]

You know you’re in for a treat when you see Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini heading the cast of a sweet and slightly goofy comedy. Steadily going beyond his persona in The Sopranos, you see James Gandolfini playing a role that his fans have probably always imagined him playing: a nice, funny guy with an […]

Michael “Eddie” Edwards (Taron Egerton) was a man with big glasses and even bigger dreams. As a physically disabled child-turned-oddly determined young adult, he tried his hands at all kinds of sports to earn himself a place in United Kingdom’s Team, only to be shunned and rejected more times than one can count. While his […]

Two twelve year olds: Sam, an introverted Khaki scout (Jared Gilman) and the sharp yet sassy Suzy (Kara Hayward), fall in love and run away to their own personal paradise they call “Moonrise Kingdom.” The young girl’s parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) call the authorities. A search party compiled of the local Sheriff (Bruce […]

A beautiful coming-of-age story that is mixed with one of the best depictions of a mother character in movie history both make Lady Bird an absolutely exquisite film. Its slice-of-life story taps into the universal issues, dreams, and frustrations that almost every small-town kid has faced; and it manages to do all of this without […]

I can’t get a song out of my head from this movie: the 1985 UK hit Desire As from Prefab Sprout. It plays when the two main characters, a sensitive kid who’s bullied by his school for not liking rugby, and the school’s rugby star; talk over the “Berlin Wall” that separates their dorm room. […]

Four Lions is as black and as dark as a movie can ever get, mixing cultural relevancy with humor and ridiculousness. It is insensitive to Islam, insensitive to terrorism and insensitive to the viewer. But it is hilarious. The director spent three years talking to Imams, terrorism experts and basically everyone. The result? A legit […]

A stylish and whimsical yet delicate look at breakups in particular and relationships in general. It stars Jim Carrey as Joel Barish and Kate Winslet as Clementine Kruczynski. Instead of going to work one morning, Joel takes an unlikely route and that’s when he meets Clementine, together they realize they share a special connection without really knowing how that connection […]

Sit back, relax, and wait for the feels. With amazing performances from an ensemble cast, including Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, and Annette Bening, as well as excellent directing; The Kids Are Alright is a highly realistic yet entertaining take on families, growing up as children, and growing as parents. Moore and Bening play a gay […]

This HBO mockumentary is part-pastiche of the mythologising sports documentary, part-zany comic creation of its own. Tour de Pharmacy tells the incredible untrue story of the 1982 Tour de France, the most chaotic iteration of the race that never happened. Of the original 170 cyclists, all but five were disqualified for bribing the deep-in-debt president […]

Will Ferrell plays a well organized IRS agent named Harold Crick who seems to have figured out everything in his life to the dot. Little does he know his life is being run by someone else, a nervous and morbid novelist, famous for ending her works with the death of the main character. As the […]

Sandra Oh earned her breakout in this warm, candid Canadian indie, which — not uncoincidentally — shares its name with that of a decorative Chinese symbol associated with marriage. The movie’s title is also a reference to 22-year-old Jade Li’s (Oh) struggle to pursue her own ambitions and meet the clashing romantic and professional expectations […]

There’s something so delightful about watching Good Morning, the second of Yasujirō Ozu’s films in color. It’s easy to see why– the conflict is relatable, Ozu’s shots are immaculately framed in warm colors, and of course, the pouting children hoping to get a television of their own are just pinch-worthy adorable. But through the neighborhood […]

A Spike Jonze classic. Funny, smart and a quirky cult-favorite comedy, it tells the story of unemployed New York City puppeteer Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) who reluctantly takes a temp job as a filing clerk for the eccentric Dr. Lester (Orson Bean). While at work, Craig discovers a portal that leads into the mind of […]

Goon is funny, violent, and sweet as hell. You’ll be surprised by how nasty it is but at the same time you won’t care. What you will want to do, on the other hand, is rip through the screen, and hug the main character. It is also a great example of a feel-good movie that […]

Based in the 1970s, William Miller is a young high school student who hasn’t experienced much in life partially due to his over-protective mother and also due to his awkwardness. His only escape is through the music he listens to religiously. Senior year he stumbles upon the opportunity of a lifetime to write a story […]

The Romanian New Wave’s predilection for bleakness gets a tongue-in-cheek dig in this buddy comedy from the same country: “Romanians are bad at making movies,” Pompiliu (Alexandru Papadopol) complains. “They only show doom and gloom.” Indeed, the premise here could easily make for a miserable movie: three hapless working-class pals win a multimillion lottery jackpot […]