Thanks for Sharing begins with a man praying before breakfast. Next, he is seated at the breakfast table, almost in the same prayer position as before. Filmed from overhead, we see his watch, tie, and belt laid out before him in … Continue reading THANKS FOR SHARING
Do you like music? I mean it, do you really like music? You don’t need to like music to enjoy this movie, but it gonna help—especially if you like punk music. ‘They Were Punk Before Punk Was Punk,’ a New York … Continue reading A BAND CALLED DEATH
The Family is about a four-piece Brooklyn mafia family that is moving to Normandy, France, as a part of the FBI witness relocation program. It is written and directed by Luc Besson (with co-writer Michael Caleo), executive produced by Martin Scorsese, … Continue reading THE FAMILY
The Grandmaster is a biopic that does what most biopic cannot do, become compelling cinema. It is director Wong Kar Wai’s return to the screen in six-year, his return to Chinese cinema in nine years, and his return to form in … Continue reading THE GRANDMASTER
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is the perfect antidote to anyone who has spent the summer overwhelmed by too many CG fight scenes, too much frantic cutting, too much shaky handheld camera work, too many sequels, and too many reboots. Saints is quiet, methodical, … Continue reading AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS
The poster for The Spectacular Now is quite misleading. When I first saw it, my eye was drawn to the girl in the yellow dress amidst a sea of green: Two teenagers sitting on the trunk of a used sedan, dressed for … Continue reading THE SPECTACULAR NOW
It opens with an image of two dead black men, lynched, with an American flag flapping in the breeze. A quote from Martin Luther King appears. It’s clear from the start, Lee Daniels’ The Butler is a political movie, but Jean-Luc Godard … Continue reading LEE DANIELS’ THE BUTLER
The Look of Love is a biopic about Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan), Britain’s richest man. Matt Greenhalgh wrote the script, with the bulk of the material coming from Paul Willetts’s biography, Members Only: The Life and Times of Paul Raymond. Paul Raymond … Continue reading THE LOOK OF LOVE
Only God Forgives is a very delicate, fragile movie. You might not think that, considering the level of graphic violence, but it is. My first viewing of this fever-dream was at the LA Film Festival in June, where a member of … Continue reading ONLY GOD FORGIVES
Michael J. Cinema 
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