B+

Match

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2015)

A ballet instructor (Patrick Stewart) at Julliard grants an interview to a “grad student” (Carla Gugino) doing research for a dissertation on the history of dance. Accompanied by her husband (Matthew Lillard), the interview takes a bizarre turn when the topic of the dance scene in 1960s New York City and one of its members is raised.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking story based on director/writer Stephen Belber’s play of the same name, Match ponders sexuality, family, career, and the consequences of choices made in the context of these. Somehow, it’s fun to watch Stewart play an aging gay man who keeps a jar full of his fingernail clippings.

(Gene Siskel Film Center) B+

http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/match/

A Most Violent Year

Video posted on by moviebloke

(USA 2014)

Not gratuitously violent as the title might imply. A Most Violent Year is not entirely what I expected, but I liked it. Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac), a gangster who’s not a gangster, runs a “clean” operation selling gas. Someone’s got it in for him, though, and a mystery unfolds slowly and deliberately with a few nail biting turns.

It’s a film that makes one think, and I left trying to define “clean.” A Most Violent Year did an outstanding job capturing without going overboard the look and feel of the really early still-70s 80s– before big hair, funky sunglasses, and shoulder pads. Props to Jessica Chastain, who played Morales’s wife with dead-on Jersey mob daughter fabulousness.

(AMC River East) B+

http://amostviolentyear.com