Starring: Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Billy Connolly, Michael Gambon, and Sheridan Smith

"Old age is for sissies."
-Cecily "Cissy" Robson (Pauline Collins)

It's no secret that we have an aging population in the US.  The baby boomers are dragging our population into old age.  Consequently, we're starting to see more and more movies about the elderly at the box office.  In the last year, we've had films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hote...

Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Barry Pepper, Kyle Chandler, Natalie Martinez, and Jeffrey Wright
 
January must be trash collection month at the box office because Hollywood keeps dumping crap onto the big screen.  Our latest junk film is Broken City, a crime drama starring Mark Wahlberg, Russell Crowe, and Catherine Zeta-Jones.  If released any other time of the year, it's something that would have been considered a worthwhi...

Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, and Isabelle Huppert

Getting old sucks, or so I've heard.  If we live long enough, it's a journey we all must take.  It's a subject that's often glossed over at the movies, but the floodgates have opened as of late on this topic.  While we've had lighter fare like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in recent months, director Michael Haneke, a septuagenarian himself, has decided to tackle the darker side o...

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, Kyle Chandler, Edgar Ramirez, Mark Strong, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Duplass, Scott Adkins, and Taylor Kinney

History seems to be the predominant story of this awards season.  It's the history of our sixteenth president and his fight to pass the Thirteenth Amendment in Lincoln.  It's the history of six American diplomats making a fake movie to escape Iran in Argo.  It's the history o...

Starring: Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Sean Penn, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Peña, and Robert Patrick

2012 was the year of long movies.  Many of them were good, but they were long.  The Avengers, Skyfall, and Lincoln all flirted with the two and a half hour mark, while The Dark Knight Rises, Les Misérables, and Django Unchained blew right past it.  Those are some long movies.  Because of this I made a New Year'...

Starring: John Magaro, Will Brill, Jack Huston, Bella Heathcoate, Brad Garrett, James Gandolfini, and Christopher McDonald

It's January.  What that means is that good new movies are hard to find at the box office.  Whether you're an action junkie or an indie lover, you're in for a drought for the next couple of months.  The holdovers from November and December are here to stay through the awards season.  At this point, studios are gearing up to release ...

Starring: Matt Damon, John Krasinki, Frances McDormand, Hal Holbrook, Rosemarie DeWitt, Scoot McNairy, Lucas Black, and Titus Welliver

For all intents and purposes, this year is just about a wrap at movie theaters around the country.  There are no major new releases slated before the new year.  The Hobbit, Les Misérables, and Django Unchained should continue to rock the box office, and I'm willing to bet money on that.  With this in mind, I've decided...

Starring: Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks, Helena Bonham Carter, Eddie Redmayne, and Sacha Baron Cohen

In musicals, acting is often compromised at the expense of singing.  Because a musical's selections are traditionally recorded before filming occurs, actors are playing to performances they gave before ever arriving on set.  As such, creativity and spontaneity are often stifled in actors' portrayals of their...

Starring: Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts

At the indie box office, it seems to be the weekend for depressing movies.  After revisiting one of the worst natural disasters in human history, I now get the distinct pleasure of watching Rust and Bone, a movie about a killer whale trainer who loses her legs in a tragic accident with the very orcas she trained.  What happened to putting out happy movies around the holiday sea...

Starring: Ewan McGregor, Naomi Watts, Tom Holland, Samuel Joslin, Oaklee Pendergast, Geraldine Chaplin, Marta Etura, and Simon Blyberg

There's always some tragedy on the news related to a natural disaster.  Earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes leave paths of devastation marked by unthinkable death tolls and billions of dollars in damages.  When we see it on the news, we often get the big picture.  It's completely understandable because ...

Starring: Lizzy Caplan, Alison Brie, Martin Starr, Geoffrey Arend, and Mark Webber

With the awards season well under way, we at Sobriety Test have not been paying too much attention to the indie VOD marketplace over the last several months.  We've had bigger fish to fry.  We've dropped the ball on this and plan on getting back on our A-game with these often surprising indies over the next several months.  A great starting point is a little romantic co...

Starring: Bill Murray, Laura Linney, Samuel West, Olivia Colman, Elizabeth Marvel, Olivia Williams, Elizabeth Wilson, Martin McDougall, and Andrew Havill

Hollywood has made one too many movies with the Great Depression and World War II as the historical backdrop.  Just look to movies like The Way Back, The Debt, and Red Tails for examples over the last couple of years alone.  It's time to make movies about some other era.  More specifically, we ...

Starring: Brad Pitt, Scoot McNairy, Ben Mendelsohn, Richard Jenkins, James Gandolfini, Ray Liotta, and Sam Shepard

In recent years, a lot of people have begun to think that America has lost its way, that we're on a downward trajectory as a people, and that the highest offices in government go to the highest bidders.  While we can certainly debate the first two points, there's no debating the final one.  After all, we live in an America where th...

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren, Scarlett Johansson, Toni Collette, Danny Huston, Jessica Biel, and James D'Arcy

Last year, the awards season was dominated by movies about making movies. All the buzz was about films like The Artist, Hugo, and My Week with Marilyn.  Hollywood apparently missed one because they've decided to do a biopic on the legendary Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock and the making of Psycho, one of the defining films of his ca...

Starring: Denis Lavant, Édith Scob, Eva Mendes, Kylie Minogue, Élise L'Homeau, Michel Piccoli, and Jeanne Disson

I have seen some weird movies this year.  Up until this point, Lee Daniels's The Paperboy held the crown for the strangest film of the year.  After all, watching Nicole Kidman give John Cusack an imaginary blow job and urinating all over Zac Efron is some pretty crazy stuff.  After seeing Holy Motors though, my opinion changed.  The Paperboy i...

Starring: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Anupam Kher, Julia Stiles, and Chris Tucker

"You have to do everything you can, you have to work your hardest, and if you stay positive, you have a shot at a silver lining."
-Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper)

Two years ago, director David O. Russell rocked my world with The Fighter.  In my opinion, it may be the best boxing movie in the last three decades.  When I hear...

Starring: Dree Hemingway, Besedka Johnson, Stella Maeve, James Ransone, and Karren Karagulian

Have you ever wondered what you would do if you found some large sum of money by chance?  Would you head straight to the bank?  Would you hit the mall?  If you knew the person to whom it belongs, would you return it?  You’re probably thinking all the politically correct things right now.  While it all seems clear when you talk about this in the hypothetical, it m...

Starring: Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfayden, Emily Watson, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander

"Romantic love will be the last delusion of the old order."
-Nikolai Levin (David Wilmot)

With the possible exception of Moonrise Kingdom, Anna Karenina has been the most heavily marketed indie flick this year.  Over the course of 2012, I have seen more advertisements for this tale of love than I care to remem...

Starring: Sean Penn, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Eve Hewson, Kerry Condon, and Harry Dean Stanton

"Something's not quite right here.  I don't know what, but something."
-Cheyenne (Sean Penn)

That quote perfectly captures my mindset after seeing the trailer for Paolo Sorrentino's This Must Be the Place.  I doubt anyone is genuinely interested in watching a road trip movie on some middle-aged rocker in retirement.  Who really wants to se...