Maria Malin/Sony Pictures Classics
MOVIE REVIEW
Third Person (2014)
Paul Haggis has again formulated an interwoven story with “Third Person,” this time finally resolving the contrivance inherent in the narrative device by having all interconnected vignettes conveniently taking place in one writer’s fertile imagination.
Guy Ferrandis/Mars Distribution
MOVIE REVIEW
Venus in Fur (2014)
Roman Polanski revisits his fascination with the psychosexual realm in a big-screen adaptation of David Ives’s Off-Broadway two-character piece “Venus in Fur,” which itself is a meta-reimagining (think Charlie Kaufman) of Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novella “Venus in Furs” that famously spawned the term masochism.
CIM Productions
MOVIE REVIEW
Dior and I (2014)
Frédéric Tcheng’s documentary “Dior and I” juxtaposes the compressed first eight weeks of Belgian designer Raf Simons’s reign as incoming creative director at the fashion house of Dior — from the announcement of his appointment to the runway of his first haute couture collection — with founder Christian Dior’s preparation for his own 1947 “New Look” collection (as recounted in passages from his 1956 memoir, “Christian Dior and I”).
Jeong Park/Sony Pictures Classics
MOVIE REVIEW
Love Is Strange (2014)
In Ira Sachs’s “Love Is Strange,” newlywed longtime companions Ben (John Lithgow) and George (Alfred Molina) must separate when their matrimony causes the latter to lose his breadwinning job as a music teacher at a Catholic school.
Ben quickly wears off his welcome at the household of his nephew (Darren Burrows), stay-at-home writer wife (Marisa Tomei) and young son (Charlie Tahan). Meanwhile, George barely puts up with frequent parties thrown by his hosts/former neighbors (Cheyenne Jackson and Manny Perez) that prevent him from crashing on their couch.
Merrick Morton/Open Road Films
MOVIE REVIEW
Chef (2014)
The film “Chef” heralds the glorious return to the big screen of food porn, a term once ascribed to “Babette’s Feast,” “Eat Drink Man Woman” and “Big Night” but now mostly relegated to the Cooking Channel. At a Tribeca Film Festival screening, the audience collectively let out an audible gasp at the sight of Aaron Franklin’s fresh-from-the-pit Texas barbecue oozing meat juices when sliced with a carving knife.
Allen Fraser/TriStar Pictures
MOVIE REVIEW
Heaven Is for Real (2014)
Based on the Rev. Todd Burpo’s account of son Colton’s near-death experience at age three, “Heaven Is for Real” climbed The New York Times best-seller list in 2010 and has now become a motion-picture event.
Colton (Connor Corum) claims to have left his body, gone to heaven and met rainbow-colored horses, his miscarried sister and even the Lord Jesus himself all while supine on the operating table with a ruptured appendix. The enterprising Pastor Burpo (Greg Kinnear) has of course seized the godsend and turned it not only into sermon anecdotes but also a best seller. But in the telling, he would very much like to convince us that he too was a skeptic and that Colton’s anesthetics-induced delirium actually made him question his own beliefs.
MOVIE REVIEW
About Last Night (2014)
Matt Kennedy/Screen Gems
“Hot Tub Time Machine” director Steve Pink’s “urban” reinterpretation of “About Last Night” unexpectedly feels as current and vital as can be — no small feat if you take into account the fact that the source material is a 1974 David Mamet play, first brought to the big screen in 1986 by Edward Zwick and starring Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, James Belushi and Elizabeth Perkins. It's all the more noteworthy that the parallel friends-with-benefits relationships Mr. Mamet once christened “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” now raise an eyebrow hardly ever.
MOVIE REVIEW
The Lego Movie (2014)
Warner Brothers Pictures
Even though Claymation is de rigueur in the realm of stop-motion animation, brickfilms date all the way back to the 1970s. There hasn’t been a prominent example perhaps because the Lego Group unsurprisingly pursued legal action over “The Magic Portal,” a feature-length brickfilm made in the late 1980s. The precedent has been enough to scare off aspiring brickfilm makers since, even though the company seemingly reversed its stance in the early 2000s with the release of Lego Studios kits.
As its title suggests, “The Lego Movie” has the company’s blessing and touts the virtues of the product. The sense of product placement and corporate synergy only deepens with Warner Brothers Animation seizing the opportunity to parade the fleet of the DC Comics characters in its catalog.
MOVIE REVIEW
Draft Day (2014)
Dale Robinette/Summit Entertainment
The N.F.L.-sanctioned “Draft Day” doesn’t just prominently feature two teams — Cleveland Browns and Seattle Seahawks — at the core of its drama, it also boasts such a glut of cameos — including one by the league’s commissioner, Roger Goodell — that if you blink you might miss one. (Head count will follow once the studio issues the press notes.)
Ivan Reitman’s film isn’t so much a celebration of athletic prowess or even good sportsmanship, though. While it does mirror those follow-your-heart narratives employed by many sports flicks such as “Moneyball” and “Field of Dreams,” “Draft Day” demonstrates that shrewd business savvy trumps conviction and passion for the game.
MOVIE REVIEW
Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013)
Wild Bunch
This year’s Palme d’or laureate, “Blue Is the Warmest Color,” and its reception exemplify how people — especially so-called allies — can be completely misguided about the LGBT community and remain blissfully clueless. The first thing any card-carrying LGBT member will point out about the film is the fact that its protagonist, Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) — eponymous of the French title, “La Vie d’Adèle — Chapitres 1 & 2” — is in fact bisexual, effectively rendering anyone characterizing her as a lesbian to be uninformed and his or her opinion on the film irrelevant. It’s all the more embarrassing when someone does it blindly based on prerelease buzz or groupthink mentality.
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