Bleakness and Ambitious Storytelling Abound in Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead begins with a bank robbery gone awry. A masked man tries to get money out of some mom-and-pop jewelry store while holding an elderly woman at gunpoint. We do not know who any of these people are or what their motivations are. We just know that this is not how things were supposed to go. Eventually, the masked man is shot while the elderly woman is also left deceased. As getaway driver Hank Hanson (Ethan Hawke), seeing that his cohort is dead, drives away in a panic, the frame freezes. From here, writer Kelly Masterson and director Sidney Lumet begin to travel down a non-linear path to show the viewer exactly what went wrong here and why.

Lars And The Real Girl Finds So Much Power In Kindness And A Terrific Ryan Gosling Performance

There is, to quote Avenue Q, "a fine fine line" between kindness and schmaltz. The latter element is widely detested and, not unfairly, looked at a manipulative way to generate pathos without actually generating substantive characters or plot details for the audience to get invested in. There are times where I've seen movies that get too schmaltzy for their own good (remember that ending of The LEGO Ninjago Movie that smothered the audience in too many hollow dramatic monologues?), but I'm always gonna root for a movie to charge towards kindness, even if it stumbles along the way. Kindness is such a vital thing in our lives and it's always good to see art championing it. Well-done kindness is one of my favorite things in all of cinema and you can see it in all kinds of movies like The Muppets, Blockers, City Lights or even the 2007 dramedy Lars And The Real Girl.

Things We Lost In The Fire Burns Brightest When Handling Drug Addiction

For her first foray into English language American feature film directing, Susanne Bier was not gonna take things slow, she was gonna hit the ground running with a film concentrated on a bleak topic. Specifically, this film in question, Things We Lost In The Fire, would kick off with the death of Brian Burke (David Duchovny) and chronicle how his demise affected two very important people in his life. These two people are his now widowed wife, Audrey Burke (Halle Berry), and his lifelong best friend, Jerry Sunborne (Benicio Del Toro), who has also been struggling with a crippling drug addiction.

Tony Gilroy Proves To Be A Skillful Filmmaker In His Directorial Debut Michael Clayton

Who is the titular character of Michael Clayton? Well, Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is the guy they ("they" being a big-time law firm) send in to help clean up messes. He'll walk you through options, he'll help you figure out the best way to proceed in a time of hardship, all that jazz. It's not a glamorous job, but it's one that pays the bills and gives Clayton a comfy life. The new client Clayton and the law firm he works for have taken on is that of the U-North corporation, which is in the middle of a lawsuit alleging that the company poisoned various local water supplies and hurt countless individuals.

For The Bible Tells Me So Explores Embracing Your Identity In Oppressive Environments

A lot has changed for the LGBTQA community in the decade since the documentary For The Bible Tells Me So. For the first time in histroy, we had a sitting U.S. President (Barack Obama) openly endorse same-sex marriage and of course we had gay marriage legalized all across the United States. Of course, for every victory, there are plenty of struggles to be faced, including a ramp-up in high-profile political action against the Transgender community in the form of idiotic Bathroom Bills, Religious Freedom bills meant to discriminate against the LGBTQA community and we're still fighting to get laws passed that will ensure businesses can't discriminate against hiring or firing people based on their sexual orientation or gender.

The Darjeeling Limited Is Sometimes Tonally Disjointed But Still Entertaining Wes Anderson Cinema

In every Wes Anderson film, the elements of whimsy and reality are always prevalent, with the whimsy usually coming in the form of the sets and dialogue while reality rears its head in the character arcs, plot points and overall themes of the stories. In his three most recent movies, Anderson has found phenomenal success going for more heightened stylized tendencies while also exploring fresh new dramatic terrain that's more complex and mature, helping him solidify his place as a truly remarkable artist. Just before that trio of masterpieces, Anderson created The Darjeeling Limited, which, interestingly, leaned on realism more heavily than a number of other movies in his filmography.

Gone Baby Gone Kicked Off Ben Affleck's Directorial Career In A Somber Fashion

Ben Affleck's career circa the mid-2000's was not in a happy place. A number of high-profile box office and critical duds like Gigli, Jersey Girl and Surviving Christmas had left his profile tainted and he would only appear on-screen in two movies (Hollywoodland and Smokin' Aces) in the five year period between 2004 and 2009. But in that time span, Affleck decided to reinvent himself as a director by adapting the first feature film screenplay he had penned since his breakthrough movie, Good Will Hunting. The movie he would make his feature film directorial debut on was Gone Baby Gone, a sobering drama that, to date, is his only directorial effort that he does not star in.