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The Giver (2014): What If We Could Remove Only the Feelings We Hate?
Phillip Noyce’s The Giver presents a society that appears peaceful because much of what makes ordinary human life difficult has been stripped away. Jonas lives in a world of conformity and contentment…
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Break Up 100 (2014): More Relationship Drama Than Comedy
Break Up 100 looks like it might be a comedy, but it plays much more like a straightforward relationship drama. There are a few comic touches, of course, though very few movies…
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Lucy (2014): Knowledge, Memory, and What Comes After Us
Lucy (2014): Knowledge, Memory, and What Comes After Us Lucy begins with a deliberately outrageous premise: a human being gradually gains access to more and more of the brain’s capacity. The movie…
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Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014) — Robots, Romance, and One Very Unimpressed Father
Transformers: Age of Extinction offers plenty of reasons to simply watch things transform. Lockdown turning into a gray Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 is an obvious example. The vehicle looks sleek and cold,…
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Maleficent (2014): Looking Beyond the Horns
Anyone who knew Maleficent only through Disney’s Sleeping Beauty had every reason to remember her as pure evil. She appeared at a royal celebration, cursed an innocent baby, and looked exactly like…
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Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist (2014): Why Ryu and Ken Fight Alike
Ryu and Ken have always seemed like two variations of the same fighter. Their personalities are different, but many of their signature techniques come from the same foundation. Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist…
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Macross: Do You Remember Love? (1984): When an Old Science-Fiction Film Still Feels Close
Macross: Do You Remember Love? was released in Japan in 1984 as a theatrical reconstruction of the original Super Dimension Fortress Macross television story. It is not a digital production, despite how…
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Zootopia (2016): Disney at Its Cutest
Zootopia is filled with the kind of charming character design that Disney animation handles especially well. From Judy Hopps’s expressive ears and determined face to the many animals adapted to city life,…
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The Boss (2016): Business Ambition Turned into Comedy
The Boss builds its comedy around Michelle Darnell, a wealthy and highly confident businesswoman whose success collapses after she is sent to prison for insider trading. Once released, she tries to rebuild…
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Luck-Key (2016): A Sign of How Far Korean Comedy Has Come
Luck-Key takes a familiar identity-swap premise and turns it into an energetic Korean action comedy. After a highly skilled assassin loses his memory in a bathhouse accident, he is mistakenly led to…