Review: Carol (2015)

* * * *
Director: Todd Haynes
Starring: Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett

It isn't until Carol's final, breathtaking scene that you can appreciate just how masterfully director Todd Haynes has controlled the film's tone. For most of its 118 minute running time, it's a tightly contained piece that holds a lot back, but in that final moment the dam finally breaks and it becomes clear that the degree of restraint Haynes has demonstrated in unfolding the story up to that point has been very much a deliberate choice. In terms of the story, it's also a wholly appropriate one, given that the narrative turns on something which must remain hidden due to circumstance, but which ultimately can't be denied. While Carol might seem at first to be too cold and closed off to connect with, it tells such an inherently simple and human story, and is so profoundly moving, that in the end connection becomes easy.

Review: The Big Short (2015)

* * * 1/2
Director: Adam McKay
Starring: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling

Writer/director Adam McKay is best known for his broad comedies, having now made several with Will Farrell (both Anchorman movies, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys), so on the surface he might not seem like the obvious choice to tell a story about the 2008 financial crisis which resulted in the collapse and subsequent bailout of the United States' major banks. However, if The Big Short wasn't a comedy, its story would be too damn depressing to watch. McKay, who adapted the screenplay with Charles Randolph from the book of the same title by Michael Lewis, takes a self-referential, aside-heavy approach to the story that, in its way, seeks to be educational in addition to entertaining and largely succeeds. It's just sort of a shame that the inescapable fact of the story is that, in the end, the joke isn't on any of the characters in the film (or the real people some of them are based on) but on all of us.

Review: Ant-Man (2015)

* * *
Director: Peyton Reed
Starring: Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll

Sooner or later, the superhero movie bubble is going to burst simply as a result of saturation. It's bound to happen and possibly quite soon as from 2016 to 2019 there are already 21 such movies planned, with seven coming out in 2016 alone. A feeling of "sameness" is going to start setting in sooner or later, especially when the same story beats keep getting hit over and over again across multiple films. Now heading into the third phase of its cinematic universe films, Marvel has the genre down to a science, but it's also reaching the point where its films could start taking on an assembly line quality. A film like Ant-Man (and, arguably, Guardians of the Galaxy before it), which probably seemed a lot less essential during the planning stages than a film like, say, Captain America because there's a lower awareness of the character in terms of the general moviegoing audience, nevertheless brings something crucial to the whole Marvel project. It's sillier and lighter than a lot of other Marvel movies, but it's also a nice break from the series of movies where the fate of the entire world is at stake and everything gets resolved with a huge battle in the sky.

Review: Brooklyn (2015)

* * * 1/2
Director: John Crowley
Starring: Saoirse Ronan

In less volatile times, a film like John Crowley's Brooklyn, adapted from the novel by Colm Toibin, might seem too gentle to be really important in the wider social context of our day-to-day lives. Right now, released in theaters at a time when politicians are competing with each other to see who can take the most vile and closed-minded position about people who didn't have the good fortune to be born in a place of democracy and/or opportunity, it's a film that touches a nerve and is a reminder that the vast majority of those people who have in the past and are right now undertaking the long journey away from everything that they have ever known and starting over in some place where everything is entirely foreign to them are doing so not to hurt anyone or destroy anything, but to try to have a better life. Brooklyn is, at its core, a love story, but it's also an immigrant story about the bravery it takes to pick up and move into the unknown half a world away, and the opportunities for kindness available to be taken by those who already happen to be there.

Road to Oscar: Winners and Nominees So Far

The awards are still rolling in, with the critics from St. Louis, Kansas City, Utah, Nevada, and Vancouver weighing in (all listed below). In addition, the Critics Choice Awards have made the rare move of adding a nominee to their Best Picture lineup after the fact, making room for a nomination for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Here's how things are stacking up: