“It’s time to stop freaking out about movies we haven’t seen” by Tasha Robinson

 “Back in January 2014, in an Entertainment Weekly article promoting Gone Girl, director David Fincher described how star Ben Affleck reacted to the script, which Gillian Flynn adapted from her own novel: “Ben was so shocked by it. He would say, ‘This is a whole new third act! She literally threw that third act out and started from scratch.” Source: The Dissolve

“Why Do Movies About Brilliant Men Always Feature Dud Women?” by Kate Erbland

“Brilliant men don’t have time for girlfriends. Women are needy creatures who will ultimately hold men back from reaching their desired greatness. At least that’s what so many movies about brilliant men would have you believe. The latest such film, Whiplash, follows an exceptionally talented drummer, Andrew (Miles Teller), whose instructor, Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), is cruel and abusive. The film itself is a wonderfully compelling look at their relationship, the cost of ambition, and the extent to which a person must push himself to be the best. But it’s vastly underdeveloped where its lone woman character is concerned.” Source: Cosmopolitan

“Gone Girl is the most feminist mainstream movie in years” by Todd VanDerWerff

“From a certain point of view, director David Fincher’s adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl is one of the most misogynistic movies ever made. It depicts a men’s rights activist’s worst nightmare come to vicious, bleeding life.” Source: Vox

“The Curse of ‘Crash’: The Narratives That Doom Oscar Movies” by Mark Harris

“There is an enduring story about the Academy Awards Best Picture race that goes like this: The best picture never wins. Every year, Oscar voters have enough temerity/foresight/integrity/discernment to nominate at least one movie on which the verdict of history would smile favorably if it were to take the prize.” Source: Grantland

“Richard Linklater’s MomentousBoyhood Is an Experiment That Makes Time Visible” by David Edelstein

“Richard Linklater’s drama Boyhood isn’t a documentary, but it has a documentary hook. Linklater filmed his leading actor, Ellar Coltrane, over 11 years, beginning when Coltrane was 7 and ending on the far side of puberty, when the boy was 18. So you see the actor go from cute and compact to a wee bit pudgy to long-waisted and deep-voiced, and the ongoing transformation alters the way you watch.” Source: Vulture

“One Man’s Trash Is Another Man’s Treasure: Lena Dunham, Louis C.K., and the Persistent Sexism of Comedy” by Joanna Robinson

“Last night, after a long hiatus, Louis C.K.’s beloved comedy Louie returned with back-to-back episodes. In the second, “Model,” the following scenario plays out. A lonely, isolated rich person approaches a younger, poorer person for a sexual assignation. We’re talking about an older man and younger woman here. The rich person obviously sees something we don’t in the poorer person, who is just at their worst here—awkward and unkempt. They have sex. Things go awry. The episode is hailed as genius.” Source: Vanity Fair

“Idealism, Pragmatism, and the Relevance of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” by Max O’Connell

“Frank Capra always gets his fair share of love every December, with his masterpiece “It’s a Wonderful Life” still standing as the definitive Christmas movie (all y’all “A Christmas Story” and “Die Hard” fans can take your complaints elsewhere). This year, however, is a special year for Capra fans, with two of his films hitting Blu-Ray just as Holiday shopping season begins. ” Source: Criticwire

“Why Can’t Movies Capture Genius?” by Clive Irving

“Tis the season, apparently, to celebrate that strange species known as the oddball British genius. It might be accidental or it might be part of a brilliant move by the “Great British” brand’s marketing team that we have three movies, Mr. Turner, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything, competing in the Oscar season that are biopics featuring, respectively, the transformative Victorian artist J.W.M. Turner, the computing phenomenon Alan Turing, and the mind-blowing astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.” Source: The Daily Beast

“Was Serial just feeding our appetite for stories about murdered women?” by Deborah Orr

“Innocent until proven guilty. Society puts great faith in that phrase, so much faith that one thing has been all but forgotten. The premise is noble, but it has no basis in reality or fact. If you’ve committed a crime, you’ve committed a crime, whether anyone but you ever knows that or anyone can ever prove it. The end.” Source: The Guardian

“North Korea: Not Funny” by Adrian Hong

“In recent months, the uproar over The Interview, a comedy about assassinating North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has triggered an escalating set of reactions: retaliatory threats from North Korean officials; a sophisticated cyberattack on Sony Pictures, reportedly orchestrated by North Korea; a pledge by the hackers to physically attack theaters showing the film; and now, on Wednesday, Sony’s decision to cancel the movie’s December 25 release altogether, as movie-theater chains began backing out of screenings.” Source: The Atlantic

“The Hobbit: How the ‘clomping foot of nerdism’ destroyed Tolkien’s dream – and the fantasy genre” by Laurence Dodds

“Lord of the Rings is rubbish. It’s a gigantic, sprawling trek of boring asides to even more boring battles, flecked like mouldy bread with tedious moralism. The crowning achievement of the films is that they managed to wrest even the shade of a passable narrative rhythm from the turgid morass of the books – books which I, at 14, had to break up with four or five novels of Terry Pratchett to even get through.” Source: The Telegraph

“The 25 Best Films Of 2014: A Video Countdown” by David Ehrlich

THE 25 BEST FILMS OF 2014: A VIDEO COUNTDOWN from david Ehrlich on Vimeo.

“Stay, Little Valentine: Philip Seymour Hoffman, 1967-2014” by Matt Zoller Seitz

“Philip Seymour Hoffman mattered.

He mattered like James Gandolfini mattered. Like Chris Penn mattered.

When I think of him, I think of the song “My Funny Valentine,” performed so memorably by his costar Matt Damon in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” one of the first of many pictures that the great actor stole whenever he appeared in it:

Is your figure less than Greek?

Is your mouth a little weak?

When you open it to speak

Are you smart?

He was not un-photographable; quite the contrary, he was magnetic, even in roles that gave him a handful of lines.” Source: RogerEbert.com