Snowpiercer

Captain Antarctica leads fierce fight to put ‘gory’ back in ‘allegory’ as the metaphorical world hurtles around the real one.  Clever concept pits social structure caricatures (wounded Hurt and swine-like Swinton) against each other on fast-paced but farcical rollercoaster that even Christof can’t save from a train-wreck of an ending.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Loki and the Ice Queen make a chillingly heart-warming couple in the moody and brooding Lost in Transfusion.  Jarmusch’s precise cinematography, characteristically superhuman musical decisions and deliberate avoidance of don’t-say-‘vampire’ clichés transform this interview into an epic.  Wasikowska chews her screen-time wonderfully while Yelchin quenches a thirst for comedic relief. 

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

Sin City: Fall of a Franchise matches 300.2’s weird chronology, imitative superficiality and nude (albeit black and white) Green.  Rourke’s Kirk Douglas is a better match than Brolin’s Owen.  Could certainly have benefited from insurance against tragic deaths of Murphy, Duncan and character development.  SinCity: Are you in gold eye?

Gone Girl

Spoiler… Despite beautiful and brooding cinematography and sound Fincher’s film falls Prisoner to lack of suspense and failure to supply source’s surplus of suspects.  Spooky Howser and Madea-at-Law arrive too late to save either story from narrative arrogance and improper pacing, or brilliant Ben from bending over for Rosamund’s Pike.

Interstellar

McConaughey masterfully pilots his space-Lincoln through a nebulous cloud of screensavers populated by irritatingly irrational men and ludicrously love-struck ladies.  Nolan proves that whether an epic spans neurons or neutron stars, all you need to confound characters and viewers is a shipload of tedious (and extremely ignorable rules).  Watch gravity?

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Fantastic Mr. Anderson narrowly manages self-expansion and self-analysis over self-imitation as he disassembles a grand Dubrovnik nesting doll to discover a delicious nut in the form of an abnormally friendly Fiennes.  A smattering of stars pepper the convoluted plot as story and cinematography anamorph from past symmetries to symmetrical pasts.