10. To the Wonder.   In a year that included the likes of Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and The Grandmaster, perhaps no popular film justifies use of the cliché “visual storytelling” more than writer/director Terence Malick’s To the Wonder.  The underlying narrative (such that it is) covers the life cycle of a love affair (said lovers played by Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko).  Alternating between the idyllic and the realistic, the dialogue (such that ... Read More »

Spoiler Scale (How spoilery is this article on a scale of 1 to 10?):  4   The buzz on Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013) – the most recent Palm d’Or winner by French director Abdellatif Kechiche – characterizes the film as a close-up-heavy, graphic examination of the life cycle of a lesbian relationship from point A to Z.  As it turns out, the film is actually the coming-of-age story of a young ... Read More »