Before We Go (2015)

New York at night, a guy and a girl story. More beautiful is the script, the simple dialog and smart direction. Alice Eve is convincing. She doesn't overdo it but does it just right. Chris Evans has exceeded my expectations as an actor, as a director. Watch this with your loved one on a quiet night with a bottle of wine. You will not regret it. This is a simple story told beautifully. Do not watch this if need complex emotions that makes you wanna kill yourself. Chris makes you wanna write your own ending to his beautifully told story, letting you speculate what this might have been. That's the beauty of this film. Waiting for more such movies from this team. Adios.

Before We Go tries so hard to capture the style of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise it plays more like a script read-through than a film with any genuine warmth and emotion.  The opening premise of damsel stuck in the city is nicely handled (several scenes are oddly reminiscent of Adventures in Babysitting), but the more the film tries to create an emotional connection between Chris Evans' and Alice Eve's characters the more they seem like brother and sister.

Aloha (2015)

Cameron Crowe is one of my favorite directors. He never fails to put a smile on my face, even if it's my 15th time watching the same film of his (Jerry Maguire). But with 'Aloha', it doesn't seem like his film at all. In fact, at times the film seems as though it's 3 different projects jumbled into one. Aloha was one of my most anticipated films this year, and with a cast that includes the likes of Bradley Cooper, Rachel McAdams, and Emma Stone, I didn't think there was any way this film would let me down. Boy, I was wrong. The trailer was fantastic. It had great music, great character drama, and a beautiful landscape, that's the makings of a great Crowe film. Unfortunately it was a bland and forgettable as a film can be. If you cant get a good film with all of the great things on your side, than there's something going on here.

I heard there was some serious behind the scene issues with Aloha. Ones that took Crowe out of the promoting of the film and even Sony's lack of marketing for the project. I mean there was only one trailer, ONE. I never bought into the Emma Stone-Bradley Cooper fling. I saw a reviewer talk about how her character thinks she's in a Will Ferrell comedy at first until toning it down later on, and that's completely true. The two seem like they are playing characters from different movies and somehow their dialogue matched up.

Suite Française (2014)

The movie tells the story of a french girl with a strict mother in law who falls in love with a Nazi officer. Well, the movie is not the cheesy love story between two people who simply cant and mustn't be together. Is way more than this. It's about the cruelty of the war and how everyone copes in the end, even if that means they have to give up on love or love the wrong people. The moral battle between the two main characters, who are stuck between their love and their loyalty to their country and people.

This is a rare thing nowadays and brings to mind the great heyday of romance in the Seventies. 'Suite Française' is set in Nazi occupied France during the start of World War II. You will therefore be crying with powerful and furious emotion. Michelle Williams is at the fore front of this film; gladly she does not fail or let the production team down in any respect. She plays a French Villager  called Lucile Angellier. I say this statement with doubt as last time I checked French people did not speak English as their first language. Her overbearing mother is played with severity by Kristin Scott Thomas. She outright leads her daughter's life for her and plays a prominent role in all of her decisions, whether they be little or large. Their village becomes ruled and dictated by German soldiers, some much more brutal than others. There are different personalities and beliefs to each of them. This is great to see, because it paints a broader and larger painting. It shows us that not everyone can be placed definitively into a category.

Hot Pursuit (2015)

Two people, one car, and what do we get? Lots of trouble! I've examined the road trip comedy before as at least two or three of these movies are released every year. We get a lot of these road trip movies all the time because this is something we have all gone through; the long stretch that never seems to end, the music that eventually becomes monotonous and the fact your going to loathe the people your riding with. Our transportation technology may have changed but the concept of a car trip has and will never go out of style. This is why we end up finding so much material for comedic possibilities.

What makes thins kind of story work is what kind of pairing that is going to be tackled upon. With movies like Vacation and We're the Millers, we've had a typical family. With The Guilt Trip and Sideways, we have groups of friends. Even with Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and Smokey and the Bandit, we set with people that hate each other from the start. All of these movies were able to develop dialogue that made the situation funny. All of these would be better road trip movies to watch then the astonishingly bad Hot Pursuit.

Child 44 (2015)

I was really looking forward to Child 44, a movie starring Tom Hardy, with Gary Oldman supporting, does the content even matter? The answer yes, the content still matters. Since I'm not sure whether it was poorly adapted or somehow the idea of murder in the soviet union, at a time when murder 'wasn't possible' in a communist state, turned into a boring film.

The problem with Child 44 can be sufficed in a simple statement - It tires to capture the novel and not the essence of the novel. That's about it. Oh! Add to that the absolutely ridiculous decision of changing the most interesting plot twist of the novel and in place adding a thematically wayward orphanage gradient to it.

2015 Venice Film festival Line Up

Kristen Stewart, Michael Keaton, Eddie Redmayne, Tilda Swinton, Ralph Fiennes and Dakota Johnson are among the stars in movies coming to the world’s oldest major film festival.

The world’s oldest major film festival in Venice, Italy will once again screen films from new and established directors, with 55 new films set for this year's 72nd edition.

Venice Film Festival director Alberto Barbera and Biennale president Paolo Baratta unveiled this year's star-studded lineup Wednesday morning at the Westin Excelsior Rome hotel. It includes much-buzzed about American films, a slew of Italian talent and various voices from world cinema. 

In the competition section, a number of U.S. titles are part of the lineup, which Barbara called one of the most diverse in festival. Among U.S. directors, the competition features Laurie Anderson's  return to directing with Heart of a Dog, a film about loss, Cary Fukunaga's Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba as a warlord in the film about child soldiers in Africa, which Netflix bought global rights to for a reported $12 million. 

Also in the competition, Duke Johnson and Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman's animated film Anomalisa, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tom Noonan, is not for kids. Centered around the crisis of the middle-aged man, the film was partially funded by Kickstarter.   

2015 Toronto International Film Festival (First Batch)

After the long line up of amazing summer movies, fall is coming, and we will have some award race with those fall film festival. TIFF has announced their first list. TIFF 2015 is going back to its Canadian roots for its 40th birthday, opening the festival with Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée's Demolition. After critical successes such as Wild and Dallas Buyers Club, Vallée will kick off the festival with Demolition, starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Gyllenhaal is just one of the A-list stars who have become fan favourites at the festival, returning to Toronto year after year. After her Oscar-winning turn in Still Alice, Julianne Moore will walk the red carpet again for Freeheld, a movie she starts in alongside Canadian Ellen Page. The film focuses on the real-life love story and fight for justice by two New Jersey women and is likely to be especially poignant in a year where same-sex marriage became legal in the United States.