Finding Dory

Review by Joseph Anthony

Our favorite fishes, Nemo, Marlin, and Dory, are all back in FINDING DORY, the sequel to the now beloved Pixar film FINDING NEMO. Last time around Marlin (Albert Brooks), Nemo’s dad, had lost his son in the Pacific Ocean. His journey to find Nemo led him to encounter many other delightful characters, including a short-term memory loss afflicted blue tang fish, Dory (Ellen DeGeneres).

Luckily for us, Marlin and Dory found little Nemo. As we revisit the gang, everyone is happily living together. Dory still can’t remember a whole lot, but she knows her new family of Marlin and Nemo. As she enjoys her new home, she starts having flashbacks to her childhood with her mom Jenny (Diane Keaton) and dad Charlie (Eugene Levy). Dory starts longing not only to remember more about her parents and childhood, but wants to set out to find them.

Concussion

Review by Pamela Zoslov

The most popular sport in the U.S is not football, basketball or baseball — it's denial. In a landscape dominated by big business, Americans have been told that cigarettes don't cause cancer, that meat is good for you, that guns don't kill people, and other lies that serve the interests of money. One such lie is that football does not cause severe brain injuries, the kind that have led to depression, rage, dementia and suicide among former players.

A Most Violent Year

Review by Pamela Zoslov

J.C. Chandor is a filmmaker who seems to have something to say, but who says it in a remarkably inarticulate way. The ultimate expression of this was ALL IS LOST, Chandor's nearly wordless film that featured Robert Redford adrift in his sinking yacht. Tedious though it was, that film at least spared us the leaden dialogue that characterized his debut, MARGIN CALL, a would-be GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS about the financial industry.

Chandor's new film, A MOST VIOLENT YEAR, finds him again in the business world, this time 1981 New York City (Chandor is the son of an investment banker). At the center of the drama is Abel Morales, the ambitious Mexican-born head of a successful heating-oil business. Although he has the demeanor, pompadour, and expensive tailoring of a Mob boss, his ethics are impeccable. (Even his name – “morals” – reflects his probity and Chandor's literalness.) “I run a fair and clean business. I have never taken anything from everybody,” Morales asserts, though he seems to have purchased the business from the father of his Mob-connected wife Anna (Jessica Chastain), whose long, manicured talons look poised to draw blood. Anna keeps the books for the business, cooking them when necessary. She defends her husband as “an honorable man” but alternately calls him “a pussy” when he refuses to carry a gun.

This Is 40

By Pamela Zoslov

If this is 40, Judd Apatow, give me 37. Or 65 and a half. Just don't let me be the age at which you're a spoiled, affluent suburban couple screaming and whining about Viagra, hemorrhoids and mortgage payments while driving your deluxe BMW and cavorting at a pricey resort.

That the same Judd Apatow who gave us brilliant episodes of The Larry Sanders Show in the '90s and the endlessly hilarious KNOCKED UP is responsible for the unendurable THIS IS 40 is both baffling and depressing. Either Apatow never was as clever as we thought, or more likely, success – as a writer, director and head of his own production company – has compromised his talent. According to a recent New York Times profile of Apatow, THIS IS 40, about the travails of middle-aged marrieds and featuring his real-life wife and children, is semi-autobiographical. If that's so, Apatow must live the shallowest life imaginable. In tackling this subject matter, Apatow doesn't need to be Cassavetes or Bergman – he just has to be funny. THIS IS 40 is sour, strident and decidedly unfunny.