Saturday, December 19, 2015 at 9:00AM Just for silly quick fun I thought we'd list our most popular tweets this year. Not necessarily the best but the ones that caught on somehow. It's like a very quick 140 character scrapbook of the film year.
Our 15 Most Popular Tweets of 2015 after the jump...
Opening Twitter. pic.twitter.com/2s2JKHoco4
— Kyle Stevens (@cinementalist) October 12, 2015
Friday, December 18, 2015 at 9:00PM Kieran, here taking a moment to talk about Mya Taylor’s Independent Spirit Award-nominated performance in Sean Baker’s Tangerine.
Being the calm in a storm is not as easy a dynamic to render on-screen as it looks. That’s what Mya Taylor is tasked with in Tangerine—playing the careful, contemplative counterpoint to Sin-Dee’s (Kitana “Kiki” Rodriguez) turbulent rampage through the streets of East Hollywood. When considering the two performances, both accomplished but in very different keys, I immediately thought of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Sadie and Mare Winningham’s title character in 1995’s Georgia (previously discussed here). Though both Alexandra and Sin-Dee’s lives aren’t exactly as diametrically opposed as Georgia and Sadie’s, there’s a similar thread of calm vs. irrational running beautifully through both films. Like Winningham, Taylor gifts her film with an unfussy balance of quiet observation and brimming, longstanding frustration. [More...]
Friday, December 18, 2015 at 4:30PM This article originally appeared yesterday in Nathaniel's column on Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a slightly longer version
[Please read with the John Williams Star Wars theme blaring in your head…]
In the first trailer for The Force Awakens (aka Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens but we’ll go with the shorter title). Han Solo famously announced…
Chewie we’re home.
You’ll be happy to learn that it wasn’t just a well placed trailer byte but a promise to audiences that the film actually delivers on. I can state unequivocably that the The Force Awakens is the best Star Wars film in 32 years. That might sound like a backhanded compliment — for what could be worse than the 1999-2005 prequels? — but it’s meant with great affection just like the film in question...
Friday, December 18, 2015 at 2:30PM 
Tim here. Our tour of the films submitted for this year's Best Animated Feature Oscar now takes us to the most obscure American-made film on the list, Regular Show: The Movie. It's a spin-off of an absurdist Cartoon Network series – that is, absurdist even by the standards of Cartoon Network – which was given the tiniest whisper of a theatrical release to ensure the publicity of articles like this one. So, a success!
The film has the freaked-out energy of a kid on a sugar rush, and assembles its plot in roughly as coherent a manner: in the future, talking raccoon Rigby (William Salyers) and talking bluebird Mordecai (director & series creator J.G. Quintel), formerly best friends, are on opposite sides of a galactic war to stop a rift in the space-time continuum for devouring all of existence. The only way to do this is for a mortally wounded Rigby to travel back to the present, where his younger self and younger Mordecai are working a dead-end job as park groundskeepers. And they have go back even further, to high school, where Rigby told a lie that kicked-off the creation of a broken time machine that led to that same rift in space-time. [More...]
Friday, December 18, 2015 at 12:00PM 
Remember friends, The Force Awakens isn't the only film arriving today, even though it may be taking the lion's share of your multiplex's screens and dominating the cultural landscape. Limited audiences finally have Cannes favorite and Foreign Language Oscar frontrunner Son of Saul and the masses also have Sisters and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip *shhhh, keep walking*.
Sisters is an interesting choice for counter-programming against the behemoth, but should satisfy its own crowds looking for a steady stream of laughs. The film would face more trouble without the trustworthy chemistry between stars Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, as it strains to set up relationships (and not just of its leads) and conflict in a murky and bumpy first act. Once Poehler and Fey are given the room to shine, the film finally finds its footing and becomes the laugh riot you were hoping for.
