Toward the end of Hotel’s second episode, Iris (Kathy Bates) fills in John (Wes Bentley) about the history of the hotel’s creator, James Patrick March (Evan Peters), who built the Hotel Cortez as a “monument to excess and opulence, where he could satisfy his own peculiar appetites”. This is presumably and fittingly a comparison to series creator Ryan Murphy, and co-creator Brad Falchuk.
Kristen Wiig continues to flex her dramatic chops in her latest starring vehicle Welcome to Me, in which she plays Alice, a woman with borderline personality disorder who wins the lottery and becomes a multi-millionaire overnight. With the means and opportunity to finally break from her carefully regimented lifestyle, consisting of medication, therapy and endless …
The New Girlfriend Written & Directed by François Ozon France, 2014 The latest from prolific French auteur François Ozon opens on a somber note as Claire (Anaïs Demoustier) recounts her lifelong friendship with the deceased Laura (Isild Le Besco), whose untimely death has left her grieving husband David (Romain Duris) alone with their infant daughter. …
Interstellar begins at an indeterminate point in Earth’s future, when blight and drought are pushing humanity to the breaking point. “This world is a treasure, but it’s been telling us to leave for a long time now,” laments engineer-turned-farmer, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey). He’s a practical man who set aside dreams of space travel in order to provide for his family, and yet his powerful intellect keeps him sneaking glances skyward. When he and his precocious daughter, Murph (Mackenzie Foy), decipher mysterious signals directing them to random GPS coordinates, Cooper is only too eager to indulge his curiosity.
Despite having a premise that would appear to push the high camp of this season even further, “Edward Mordrake (Part 1)” features some of the most touching and genuinely emotional moments seen in the season thus far. Though the elements of camp are certainly still present, “Mordrake” sees the season moving into more emotionally resonant territory.
A passionate starving artist is at the center of The Time Being, an overly portentous new drama that doesn’t see such a central figure as being too stereotypical. No, this is a movie about how Art is Serious, so serious, in fact, that focusing entirely on one’s work trumps trivial matters like work, family, friends, and more. Though the movie is packed with pretty images, thanks entirely to the skill and craft of its fairly overqualified cinematographer, The Time Being is a mostly limp portrait of the artist as inwardly selfish and ambitious.
The Hunger Games Written for the screen by Suzanne Collins, Gary Ross and Billy Ray Directed by Gary Ross USA, 2012 In the dystopian, totalitarian nation of Panem, a wealthy capital city rules over an impoverished nation of districts. As penance for a previous rebellion, every year sees each district forced to enter two adolescents …