So, a Hollywood love story doesn’t have to be sappy

There is still room in Hollywood for a big love story. Gina Prince-Blythewood proved it to me with “Beyond the Lights.” I have to admit I was a little gunshy after taking in my first Nicholas Sparks movie ever a while back with “The Best of Me,” but I chose this first-run drama and music…

Keaton’s ‘Birdman’ alights on a lofty perch at Manlius Art Cinema

It felt right to see “Birdman” in an art cinema. The Manlius Art Cinema, to be exact, a tiny movie house about a dozen miles to the southeast of Syracuse, N.Y., where art movies come to run on a screen way smaller than those employed by the big chains nearby and watched by … well,…

When they go to the tape on the news, do you believe what you see?

When I sit with my dear wife Karen in our home in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Syracuse and watch the local TV news, I believe what I see. The clips are true. The film is righteous. Accidents, on the spot, shot by crew or freelancers or … So I picked “Nightcrawler” as this week’s…

Bill Murray wins me over as a meanie with a small soft side

Bill Murray is somebody completely different in “St. Vincent.” And oh, do I love the cool old guy for it. Hey, I’ve been digging his work long enough that I feel like I can call him an old guy with no serious repercussions, right, Bill? I know, 64, you’ve got a lot of greatness still…

‘The Best of Me’ almost brings out the worst in me

I did not want to sit through 2 hours, 15 minutes of a World War II movie, so I said no to “Fury.” Instead I picked the 1 hour, 51 minutes of “The Best of Me,” yes, the Nicholas Sparks melodrama, full of romance and twists and turns and beautiful actors. My first Nicholas Sparks…

Duvall, Downey Jr. make love-hate relationship easy to judge

Some father-son relationships can never be mended. As the elder and the younger bicker and fight and squander every moment life affords them to look at themselves and each other through a different prism and, well, get over it, everybody around them tires of it all, throws up their arms, and wishes they’d just go…

‘Gone Girl’ will make you think twice about trust issues

“Gone Girl” is a great mystery. Thank you, Gillian Flynn. From her novel of 2012, Flynn also was the screenwriter for this 149-minute thriller of twists and turns of trust that chronicled what went so horribly wrong in the fictional life of Ben and Amy Dunne. I am not going to spoil it for those…

If you need to settle a score, call Denzel Washington

Denzel Washington runs around in “The Equalizer” vanquishing evil as if he should be wearing tights and appearing in a title put out by the Marvel Universe. Robert McCall starts out as a guy who wants to mind his own business in this action thriller, he really, really does. In fact, he’s trying to dodge…

In ‘This Is Where I Leave You,’ it takes a death to jump start a life

Judd Altman goes home to attend his father’s funeral in a stage of his life that, well, sucks really bad. He’s just caught his wife cheating on him. With his boss. So he’s wifeless and jobless. And now he’s forced to sit shiva with two brothers, a sister, in-laws, and a mother who wrote a…

‘The Drop’ takes us to a Brooklyn dark and tense

Read much of the work of Dennis Lehane? Seen “Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone” or “Shutter Island” perhaps? Well, the novels or movies from the mind of this Massachusetts crime-drama master are not requisite for enjoying “The Drop,” I don’t think, but being primed for his sort of tension surely helped me keep my wits…