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Hey, everybody, it's movie time!

Kim Hollis: What movies have you seen lately and what are your thoughts?

Matthew Huntley:

Albert Nobbs: Strong performances highlight a mostly dull and uninteresting story. Needed to take a stronger stance on its themes (lesbianism, transgender, entrepreneurship, patriarchal societies, etc.).

The Grey: Uncommonly powerful thriller that goes against the grain of convention by making us NOT want to be the characters. Film has at least half a dozen scenes that are compelling, tender and nuanced.

Underworld: Awakening: Eighty minutes of noise. The action is so outrageous that it's amusing, but it eventually runs around in circles and we grow numb to what we're seeing and hearing.

The Iron Lady: More a history book manifest than a fully realized narrative with drama. Despite Meryl Streep's embodiment of Margaret Thatcher, it doesn't tell us anything about the U.K.'s first female prime minister we couldn't haven't read about in a high school textbook.

A Separation: Ceaselessly watchable and hard-hitting drama that makes us feel deep empathy for the characters. Reminds us how important it is to be patient, attentive, truthful and communicable with our family and neighbors.

Brett Beach: A select few from the past few months of (mostly) library rentals -

The House of the Devil: The payoff isn't up to what precedes it, and it really doesn't matter. Writer/director Ti West has fashioned a near facsimile of a low-rent late '70s/early '80s American horror film and the 75 minutes of buildup that precede the denouement studiously avoid parody and any wink/winks at the audience. I watched it with the lights on and still got near-nauseous with dread. I am now excited for his latest The Innkeepers.

Paradise Alley: Stallone's reward for Rocky, his 1978 debut as a writer/director. It takes place in Hell's Kitchen in the late 1940s and switches out boxing for wrestling. Thanks to the climactic grappling that takes place indoors in the middle of a torrential downpour (!) I now know where part of the inspiration for the insane ending of Staying Alive comes from.

Bronson: Nicolas Refn's films from Fear X on to Drive all seem to suffer/profit from the same dichotomy. He wants to keep things as mysterious and unsettling as Lynch and spell (almost) everything out like Nolan. The subject of this unconventional biopic (a man who has spent most of his adult life in prison, much of it in solitary) is brought to unsettling life by Tom Hardy - who seems to be on Val Kilmer's career trajectory which would indicate flameout by 2025 - and the moments when he singularly commands the screen are the most effective.

The Best Years of Our Lives and Magnolia: My picks for annual Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve viewing (I've seen them each about three times on those dates alone) The former is my choice for the most well-deserved Best Picture winner ever, a 1946 film that offers a sentimental and sobering view of WWII Vets returning to their lives in small-town America, and the latter, P.T. Anderson at his most ridiculous and sublime. I cry during the prologue and then about every 20 minutes or so thereafter.

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