Netflix is now streaming “Nightcrawler” for free — a fact I discovered after paying four bucks for it on Amazon Prime. If you like a smart noirish crime thriller, it’s definitely worth a look. Jake Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a weird loner who gets by selling stolen scrap metal in outer L.A. One night […]
‘Blue Ruin’ rules
Just when you conclude that the Netflix movie catalog really is a steaming pile of two-star manure, you stumble across a gem. That’s what I discovered tonight in “Blue Ruin,” a taut, lean revenge thriller that defies everything you might expect from this sort of film. For starters, it stars nobody you’ve ever heard […]
Bring on da crap
The world really is going to hell, isn’t it? We’ve got ISIS cutting off everybody’s heads. We’ve got the ebola virus on a sightseeing tour of America. And now we’ve got Adam Sandler contractually obligated to do at least four more movies. It’s the last one that really makes me fear for America. Ever […]
Mind if I vape?
The word “vape” has been around at least a decade, but I predict it will become one of the most overused words of 2014, and one of the most overdone activities. When I saw Julia Louis-Dreyfus puffing away on an e-cig at the Golden Globes, I realized that old-fashioned cigarettes are on the way […]
As the Oscars go by
We complain about the Oscars every year, but usually there are at least couple of semi-remarkable moments to make the show memorable. This year, all we got was Kim Novak’s ruined face and a running gag about rich people actually ordering and eating pizza. And paying for it! Ha ha. This show. I don’t […]
I’ll take ‘Nebraska’
We finally got around to seeing Nebraska. Of the four 2014 Oscar nominees I’ve now watched, this is my favorite. (The others are Dallas Buyer’s Club, Gravity and American Hustle.) My reasons for preferring it are strictly personal: the small-town West is a milieu I know pretty well. I grew up around these folks, […]
On the road with ‘Llewyn Davis’
Inside Llewyn Davis is a minor film in a minor key, and if it didn’t have the Coen brothers’ name on it, it might not be getting so much awards-show buzz. But it’s still a compelling movie, even if it’s not one most people would want to see again. To be honest, this was […]
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