 Rating: 4 out of 5 starsThe great British painter, J.M.W. Turner, was quite a character. In Mr. Turner (opening today), the long-time British character actor, Timothy Spall, plays the titular man as quite the character, to near-brilliant effect. Spall (American audiences may recognize him best as the villainous Wormtail from the Harry Potter films) gives an all-in, brutally honest performance and is reason alone to seek the film out.
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 Rating: 3 out of 5 starsRun Time: 2 hours 1 minute, Rated PG-13
Starring: Kevin Costner, Gillian Jacobs, Octavia Spencer, Jillian Estell, Jennifer Ehle, Anthony Mackie, Andre Holland Written and Directed by Mike Binder (Reign Over Me, Man About Town, The Upside of Anger, The Sex Monster, Blankman, Indian Summer) The beginning scenes of Black or White(opening today) are tragic. Elliot (Kevin Costner) is alone outside of a hospital emergency room when he receives word that his wife has just been killed, suddenly and horribly, in a car accident. His best friend and lawyer buddy (played straight by the funny stand-up comedian, Bill Burr) is there to console him, but imagine his pain.  Rating: 3 out of 5 starsMost Violent Year (opening today) has the sound of a gritty crime thriller. What it is actually, is an ordinary film about ordinary people, who happen to get tangled up in an unlikely set of circumstances.
 Rating: 3 out of 5 starsGenre: Comedy, Drama
Run Time: 1 hours 51 minutes, Rated R Starring: Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Kyra Sedgwick, Nina Arianda, Dylan Baker, Dianne Wiest, Charles Grodin Based on the book by Philip Roth Written by Buck Henry (Get Smart, Town & Country) Directed by Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, You Don't Know Jack, Toys, Bugsy, Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam, The Natural, Diner) Just as Michael Keaton was born to play Riggan Thomson in Birdman, so was Al Pacino born to play Simon Axler in The Humbling (opening today). Pacino is of course, a legendary actor and among the best of his generation. In The Humbling, he gives perhaps his best big-screen performance in nearly two decades, playing an aging actor who some criticize for "over-acting" from time to time, and a man who has all but lost his passion for the craft. That must sound familiar, no?  Rating: 4 out of 5 starsGenre: Drama, Foreign
Run Time: 1 hour 35 minutes, Rated PG-13 Starring: Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Catherine Salee Written & Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne (The Kid with a Bike, The Silence of Lorna, L'enfant) Two Days, One Night (opening today) is the latest effort from the filmmaking duo, the Dardenne brothers, a Belgian directing tandem responsible for one of the best films of 2012, The Kid with a Bike. With their latest effort, they once again show their brilliance in creating small, human stories rich with raw emotion. It stars Marion Cotillard, whose stripped-down performance just earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress.  Rating: 4 out of 5 starsGenre: Drama
Run Time: 1 hour 42 minutes, Rated R Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Sam Worthington, Felicity Huffman, Chris Messina, Anna Kendrick Written by Patrick Tobin (No Easy Way) Directed by Daniel Barnz (Won't Back Down, Beastly, Phoebe in Wonderland) Few critics or mainstream audience members had seen or heard of Cake (opening today), before the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) nominated Jennifer Aniston's performance at the Golden Globes earlier this month. As the film was slowly digested (no pun intended) over the past few weeks, Aniston's raw portrayal of a deeply scarred, suicidal, pill-popping "raving b***h" (her words, not mine), has been met with near unanimous praise from many more than just the HFPA. Despite Jennifer being snubbed by the Academy (many thought she would earn an Oscar nom), this really is a great career turn for the popular actress. Count me in as a big fan of Aniston and her performance in Cake.  Rating: 2 out of 5 starsGenre: Thriller, Crime, Action
Run Time: 2 hours 13 minutes, Rated R Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Leehom Wang, Wei Tang, William Mapother, John Ortiz Directed by Michael Mann (Public Enemies, Collateral, Ali, The Insider, Heat, The Last of the Mohicans, Manhunter) Chris Hemsworth is a capable and charismatic action star, who has shown that he can carry a film (see Thor) and has also shown flashes of real acting prowess (see Rush). But the fatal flaw of the new Michael Mann cyber-thriller Blackhat(opening today) is that we are to be convinced that Hemsworth can be a brainy computer hacker. Consider my disbelief not only suspended, but thrown out the window entirely.  Rating: 4 out of 5 starsGenre: Action, Biography, War
Run Time: 2 hours 14 minutes, Rated R Starring: Bradley Cooper, Sienna Miller, Luke Grimes, Jake McDorman Based on the book by Chris Kyle Written by Jason Hall (Paranoia, Spread) At the ripe old age of 84, Clint Eastwood is one of the hardest working directors in Hollywood these days, churning out movies at about the same pace as Woody Allen (roughly one per year over the past two decades). Although he has directed several films exploring the U.S. Military (Heartbreak Ridge, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters from Iwo Jima to name a few), he delivers a successful direct hit with his latest effort, American Sniper (opening today.)  Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures, 2014. Used with Permission. Two confessions need to be made right from the start of this review: I don't worship the ground Paul Thomas Anderson walks on and I am not one to smoke pot. Inherent Vice (opening today) though, is a bullet-proof winning achievement for anyone who falls into either category. For everyone else, it's a jumbled drug-trip of epic proportions, the perfect film to put on to keep your cat entertained as a kaleidoscope of colors, themes and scenes are swirled together to create a grandiose heap of pretentious moving sludge.
 Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures, 2014. Used with permission. If there was ever a time to learn from our past, the time is now. In light of the recent tragedies in Ferguson and New York City, Selma (opening today) could not open at a more important time. It is not a biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as one might suspect, but instead it focuses on one of the most important events in the civil rights movement, an event that of course, Dr. King was a big part of. Instead, it's a film about people, about our rights as Americans and it's a reminder of how drastic change can be accomplished through peaceful protest.
Yep, couldn't have come at a better time. |
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tom santilli movie reviews
Tom Santilli is a professional film critic, TV personality, host and
the Executive Producer of Movie Show Plus.
He also is the featured film critic appearing on WXYZ Channel 7 Action News in Detroit,
and appeared weekly on FOX-2 in Detroit from 2016-2020.
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