Allen Ginsburg had to learn about love just as the rest of us do. Often, it's easy to think of authors and poets and other creative types as having known the answers all along.  They experiment with a certain substance and bam! the meaning of life's biggest questions appear.  Appear for you to put on paper and become the voice of a generation.  I thought that way on film school and, ten years later, am still figuring out life through experiences. Ginsburg could have done all the drugs he wanted, but it wasn't until he fell in love with Lucien Carr that he could write with deeper meaning. 

During a road trip the Grant family, Woody, Kate, and David, visits the cemetery to pay respects to Woody’s family.  Woody, the elderly patriarch of the Grant family is quiet, reserved, and respectful of the dead.  Kate, his wife, has no filter and openly discusses her (biased) feelings towards her husbands family.  David, the younger son desperately tries to keep the peace - awkwardly entertaining his mother’s verbal diarrhea while trying to respect the silence his father longs for.  Though a wildly comedic moment, it illustrates the family dynamic.  A family which has largely coexisted through the love of each others differences.  A family that, like most families, may not always understand one another but loves unconditionally.

Seeing Robert Redford on the big screen again was such a pleasure.  Other than a film he did last year with Shia LeBeouf (which I didn’t care to see), it has been six years since his last film - the decent Lions for Lambs.  He carries with him, and always has, an individual presence that flows into the characters he portrays.  Handsomely rugged, Redford is all charm, humility, and warmth giving his characters an instant relatability without needing to try.  This, however, cannot always save a film as is the case with All is Lost, a story derived from The Old Man and the Sea, about a man who is, well, lost at sea.  Though well directed by JC Chandor (Margin Call), All is Lost asks that you relate to a character purely based on the circumstances he is in.  Is that enough?  For me, no, it is not.  

Breathtakingly stunning, Gravity is a visceral experience that not only needs to be viewed on the largest screen possible, but with the largest audience possible.  It is an hour and twenty minute thrill ride best shared and it exemplifies what it means for film to be a communal experience.  When every audience member is as entranced as you are, caught up in the emotional roller coaster that is Gravity, another (often overlooked) facet of film viewing happens.  Film was always meant to be viewed with other people, and movies like Gravity reinforce this idea.  No one ever experiences something unique and wishes they were alone.  There’s always a desire to look to that person to your left and know they feel it too.

Ron Woodruff (Matthew McConaughey) is living his life the only way he knows how - work, drugs, booze, and sex.  Not the most glamorous of lifestyles, but it works for him.  However, these life choices have serious consequences, which Ron finds out when a hospital visit triggers a series of life changing events.  Dallas Buyer’s Club tells, not only Woodruff’s story, but the story of those who were diagnosed with HIV in the late 80’s  whom society knowingly shunned.  

The first half of this movie is so all over the place it's hard to not only follow, but really care what is going on.  Quickly falling into the trap that so many biopics fall into, Rush attempts to cover a lot of ground in a small amount of time.  As you watch, you're struggling to figure out which pieces are important.  Rush is like the high school math problem that gives you too much information to solve for 'x.'  However, once you sift through everything and finally arrive at 'x,' you're oddly satisfied knowing that you could out smart the problem and arrive at the desired answer.  At Rush's halfway point, you finally figure out 'x' and the movie becomes engrossing.  When you thought there was no way it could build to a satisfying conclusion, the movie does just that.  It's unfortunate that it took so long for the film to find it's footing.