Building off that solid start, reuniting with Gosling, and bringing his storytelling to an ever larger scale than before, Cianfrance's latest film,The Place Beyond the Pines, is nothing short of a modern masterpiece. Brimming with more of that palpable emotion and wrought with ever-increasing tension, tragedy, triumph, and importance, The Place Beyond the Pinesis the first great film of 2013 and better than just about every movie this critic reviewed in 2012.
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Come to the film for the visuals and hang around for enough surprises and developments to make you feel better about the IMAX ticket price. Once again, it's not a sure-fire classic, but it's just the start to a promising 2013 for science fiction.
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42 completely stands as a respectful, heroic, and fascinating movie that matches the respectful, heroic, and fascinating man himself. Yes, it has its forgivable offenses of oversimplification, sunny optimism, Disney-like gloss, and convenient revision, but the film succeeds in its primary goal to inspire the viewer.
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Olympus Has Fallen dials up a spring picnic of R-rated thrills and summer-level action a month before the big summer season really gets things underway.
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As fun as it is, G.I. Joe: Retaliation isn't breaking any new ground, but, again, it doesn't have to. While it's less out-there than the first film, it still delivers enough cool action to entertain. It was better than A Good Day to Die Hard in this critic's opinion. It's not a movie you'll brag about at the workplace water cooler on Monday, but it's one you'll catch yourself still sitting down to watch again on basic cable for the next several years. It's not dazzling enough to reach a cult status or guilty pleasure level, but if they keep bringing out the big guns, we are likely to keep coming back.
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As the title of this editorial suggests, everyone around Chicago probably has a Roger Ebert story. Here's mine...
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