Cake

Aniston’s performance is the icing on this otherwise bland slice of life.  Upper-crust Crime and Punishment substitutes murder victim for Kendrick, who learns that what goes Up in the Air must come down.  Barazza adds bit of Babel, perhaps because her maid services were left to Jen in the settlement.

The Judge

Stark becomes a Lannister, with incest, odd siblings, and a principled but morally questionable patriarch.  Duvall delivers best performance in bleak and tedious character study that’s frequently distracted by irrelevant bench discussions.  Overwhelming burden of choosing genre crushes this Grisham reject resulting in a case that must appeal… to few.

The Theory of Everything

Redmayne stands out as he sits down in A Beautiful Imitation of My Left Foot while an understated ensemble provide almost as much support as the real life characters they portray.  Effectively presents the contents of Hawking’s complex mind, while probing deep into the moral ambiguities of human hearts.  Crunch!

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

If only the VFX team could have painted better story motivation or character development onto a script filled with dialog more on-the-nose than dots on Serkis.  Brilliant effects (excluding over-ambitious deer) hardly make up for a film so over-simplified that any ape could understand it (and declare war in response).

The Interview

Rogen enlists Franco’s regime to take ‘cowardly’ sniper shots at global enemy number Un.  A smattering of comedic cameos and clever overall concept put wind in this film’s paper bag, but the Pineapples’ inability to filter their brainstorm result in a tedious dud prompting wishes that This Were the End.

The Giver

Despite divergence from slower, more philosophical source material, this underdeveloped dystopia could still have given more game to satisfy the viewers’ hunger.  Jeff’s mediocre mental montages barely Bridge the gap between surface silliness and deeper meaning while beautiful B&W cinematography further undermines premise through vast superiority to clichéd color counterpart.