Stonehearst Asylum ★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Brad Anderson Millennium Entertainment (Official Site) 112 Minutes In Theaters Beginning October 24, 2014 (Limited) – In Edgar Allan Poe’s wry short story “The System of Dr. Tarr and Prof. Fether,” a young doctor takes the opportunity to visit a renowned mental asylum and …
Force Majeure ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Ruben Östlund Magnolia Pictures (Official Site | Facebook) 120 Minutes In Theaters Beginning October 24, 2014 (Limited) – Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke) and their two adorable children (real-life siblings Vincent and Clara Wettergren) are spending a week at the gorgeous …
“In any case, this film isn’t a Western. It’s really about people who want nothing more than a home of their own. That was actually the great American dream at the time, and in all the statistical questionnaires that ask what Americans aim for, 90% always gave the answer: ‘Owning …
Automata ★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Gabe Ibáñez Millennium Entertainment (Official Site) 110 Minutes In Theaters October 10, 2014 (Limited) – It’s the year 2044, and thanks to a series of devastating solar storms, the world’s population has been slashed to only 22 million, most of whom are confined to the …
The Two Faces of January ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Hossein Amini Magnolia Pictures (Official Site) 96 Minutes In Theaters September 26, 2014 (Limited) – Rydal (Oscar Isaac) is a young American ex-pat in Greece, a part-time tour guide and full-time grifter who finds himself intrigued by a couple vacationing on …
Former boxer turned police officer turned private eye, Spenser — no first names please, he’s got an air of mystery to maintain — has just lost a client, a former hooker who was shot by the henchmen of the gangster trying to bring her back into his fold. Hired the …
Honeymoon ★★★½ / ★★★★★ Director: Leigh Janiak Magnolia Pictures/Magnet Releasing (Official Site) 87 Minutes In Theaters September 12, 2014 (Limited) – “Amongst all the savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.” John Chrysostom, as quoted in The Bridal Bed (Joseph Braddock, 1961) Newlyweds Bea (Rose Leslie) and …
This is my They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They 1000 Greatest Films update, the last of the dull end-of-summer update posts for SBBN. I haven’t seen nearly as many of the films on my TSPTD1K list (or the supplemental Scorsese and IMDb lists) as I’ve wanted for various reasons, mostly because …
A few notes about SBBN that I’ve been putting off until there’s enough for one big post that’s easier to skip: * Recently, the blog has had a couple of periods of downtime due to some glitches which no one at my webhost can identify. My theory is that the …
When it came to attracting the eye of some of the biggest silent screen legends, Vilma Bánky had no peer. After acting in a few films in her native Hungary, producer Samuel Goldwyn spied her in 1925 and persuaded her to come to Hollywood. She agreed, and became an immediate …
