Blue Valentine is a film that centers around a contemporary married couple in a struggle to keep the relationship afloat amidst a dimming romantic flame between them. The film is raw, unflinching, and boasts two of the most intense, brave performances from leads Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.
The film portrays the relationship by cross-cutting between the present as a struggling married couple and their initial meeting and subsequent courtship. The film is such a roller coaster of emotion that it’s almost unnerving at times.
Gosling and Williams deliver two of the most powerful performances in recent memory, as the film forces the two actors to balance equal parts optimism and dejection, a rare feat that allows each of them to rip your heart out and put it back time after time.
The two burst off screen with Gosling channeling the intensity of Robert De Niro with Nicholas Cage’s ability to completely delve into the character like a chameleon. Williams is just a powerful, but her performance might be just slightly more impressive just because of how amazingly brave and one of a kind it is.
Black Swan is one of the most unique films I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s a well crafted, menacingly dark, vividly imaginative movie that coasts on a strong central performance from Natalie Portman and some voyeuristic direction from Darren Aronofsky.
Hollywood produces, on average, about one boxing movie a year. Boxing. This year’s installment, The Fighter, might just be the best one ever. And yes, I know it’s lame to proclaim that after seeing a movie once, but The Fighter packs a hell of a punch all around, and also boasts 2010’s best performance: an enigmatic turn from Christian Bale as boxing prodigy/crack addict Dicky Eklund, while also elevating itself as being traditional, and unique, at the same time.
True Grittakes a unique approach to the modern western, trading in the traditional solemn, dry, overly serious tone for a darkly comedic, impeccably acted one that really allows it to differentiate itself among its peers in the genre as a film that bucks trends rather than embrace the status quo.
I would have a hard time naming more than ten movies off the top of my head in rapid succession that are as visually stunning as Tron: Legacy is for the bulk of two hours.
Listening to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an event. Somehow, in a world saturated with great music, Kanye West has proven an ability to regularly produce some of the most compelling, globally and internally poignant at once, most listenable pieces of music today. On his fifth album, as he has regularly done for nearly a decade now, Kanye has raised the bar to superhuman levels yet again, potentially changing the game one more time.
Kings of Leon exploded in 2009. Out of a cannon they shot to music super-stardom upon the enormous success of their album Only By The Night, and seemingly overnight they went from being alternatively popular to pop music juggernauts.