Andrew Neyman has a problem. Played by Miles Teller in the Oscar-winning film “Whiplash,” he’s an ambitious musician, a drummer in one of the elite music schools in the country. When the school’s top jazz instructor, Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons),…
The period drama juggernaut “Downton Abbey” rolls on in Season 5, and creator Julian Fellowes has programmed in some minor course corrections addressing the several disappointments of Season 4. Don’t worry, the changes are more of focus rather than tone…
“By The Gun” is about guns, duh. It’s also about organized crime, honor, family, more guns, and angry men shouting at each other in between long, terse silences. Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian in the “Narnia” films) plays Nick Tortano, a…
How’s this for a tortured metaphor? While watching “Reach Me,” I was reminded of ads from a certain national taco chain. You know, where a stentorian voice-over exhorts the glories of yet another Python-esque variation on the Mexican food crunchy/soft paradigm (“grilled…
As restrained and craftsman-like as ever, Series 7 of the Inspector Lewis mysteries doesn’t exactly break new ground, but still hits the right notes of character and complication in the unusually dangerous environs of author Colin Dexter’s Oxford. Kevin Whatley…
Next to “starring Jim Carrey,” the movie poster phrase that gives me the deepest case of heebie-jeebies is ‘based on a true story.” Too often a flimsy excuse for blowhard platitudes, or a conveniently noble dodge for sloppy filmmaking, it’s…
A Gothic thriller that wears its humble aspirations proudly, like a grimy but well-tied cravat, “Stonehearst Asylum” has pretty much everything one could expect from a period piece with the word ‘asylum’ in the title. All that, and Ben Kingsley, too. Jim…
It seems incredible now that “The Office” was first viewed as a risky proposition in its first season. 9 seasons and 201 episodes later, it stands as one of the great TV comedies, daring and hilarious, a brilliantly funny exploration…
In the excellent DVD box set “Universal Classic Monsters,” Universal Studios puts it all together in a 21-disc, 30-film collection that covers all of their monster features released between “Dracula” (1931) and the last release in the cycle, “The Creature Walks Among…
The romantic comedy seems to be a genre on continual life-support—never healthy enough to ditch the I.V., but never quite bad enough to have the plug pulled. With “What If,” the rom-com rolls sideways on the gurney, playing minor variations on the…