Film Review: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

While some might point to Christopher Nolan's Interstellar as this year's Gravity, largely due to their shared genre and similar release date, that title truly belongs to Alejandro González Iñárritu's odd dark comedy Birdman. Or, to give it its full, grammatically baffling title, Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). There are some personal connections between the two films - Iñárritu and Gravity's director, Alfonso Cuarón, are longtime friends, while the films share a cinematographer in Emmanuel Lubezki. The more substantial connection lies in a shared formal daring, and a willingness to approach relatively straightforward stories in ways which are stylistically adventurous. It's easy to imagine the films as a game of oneupmanship between two friends at the height of their respective powers.

Film Review: Movie 43 (2013)

Halle Berry (pictured) discovers that Catwoman is no longer the biggest mistake she's ever made.

There are many different kinds of bad film, with no single genre being immune from producing absolute crap, but far and away the worse kind of bad movie is a bad comedy. This is for the simple reason that if a drama or a horror film is bad, you can at least laugh at how badly it fails to function on even its most basic level. Mystery Science Theater 3000 spent a decade demonstrating that fact by turning bad horror, science fiction and drama into comedy. On the other hand, if a comedy doesn't make you laugh, then there's really no good way to respond to it. All you can do is sit there and pray that it ends soon.

Film Review: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Let history show that this was officially the point at which Woody Allen just stopped trying.

Woody Allen has directed at least one film a year since 1982, and his decision to keep up that work rate well into his 70s is, on one level, incredibly admirable. However, whenever he produces a film as lazy, ill-conceived and tired as You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, it's hard not to think that, much like Alfie Shebritch (Anthony Hopkins), he might be better off accepting that he isn't as young as he used to be and that adopting a more sedate pace, or at least taking an extra few months to come up with an ending to his script, might be a better idea.