All of us were moved and wowed by Richard Linklater’s ambitious and profound film following the life of a Texas boy from first grade through freshman year in college. Solely as an experiment — shooting with the same actors in snippets at a time over a 12-year period — “Boyhood”...
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What the Flick?! — Yves Saint Laurent
Yves Saint Laurent was an innovator in the world of haute couture. This biopic about him is pretty by-the-numbers. Alonso and I got all gussied up to review....
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Yves Saint Laurent
The first of two biopics this year about the influential French fashion designer, “Yves Saint Laurent” is visually lush but emotionally shallow. Pierre Niney bears a striking resemblance to the late haute couture powerhouse with his lanky frame and those signature spectacle. But we never get a strong sense of...
Read moreJersey Boys
Warner Bros. Pictures Rated R for language throughout. Running time: 134 minutes. Two stars out of four. The Four Seasons’ music was poppy, frothy, infectious. Clint Eastwood’s movies are moody, weighty, elegant. These two artistic instincts wouldn’t seem to be a good fit for each other, and as it turns...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — Jersey Boys
Hopefully by the time you watch this, we all will have purged the Four Seasons songs from our brains. They are darn catchy. Clint Eastwood’s film itself, though — while glossy and entertaining — is also rather conventional and safe....
Read moreRogerEbert.com — Lullaby
Richard Jenkins, an actor of great insight and subtlety, makes his moments tolerable and occasionally moving in this otherwise mawkish drama. Jenkins stars as the wealthy patriarch of a Manhattan family who gathers his loved ones around his hospital bed to witness his decision to go off life support after...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — How to Train Your Dragon 2
The sequel “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is wondrous, colorful and vibrant. But it also dares to present some very serious themes and see them through to their completion. I took Nicolas to see it and he was only slightly frightened of the character Djimon Hounsou voices: a villain...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — The Rover
“The Rover” is a slow burn — a bleak vision of a parched, post-apocalyptic wasteland, but one with surprises and startling bursts of violence in store. Australian director David Michod’s follow-up to the great “Animal Kingdom” features a stoic Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson doing the most daring (and un-“Twilight”-like)...
Read moreRogerEbert.com — The Fault in Our Stars
I will happily admit to having tears streaming down my face as I read John Green’s juggernaut best seller “The Fault in Our Stars.” But the awkward film version felt emotionally inert, despite the lovely, accessible presence of Shailene Woodley. The tween and teen girls are angry about my RogerEbert.com...
Read moreWhat the Flick?! — The Fault in Our Stars
The boys and I compare how much we cried (or didn’t) while watching the film version of novelist John Green’s pop-culture phenomenon about teen cancer patients in love....
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