An utterly remarkable film, by which I mean every single scene, perhaps even every single moment of Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien's work of beauty, compassion, and the strength to enact non-violence. As if she were the heroine of an anti-Kill Bill, our female protagonist, discipled as an assassin of elite enemies, spends pretty much the entire film trying not to harm anybody. 

Adam McKay and Charles Randolph's film about what led to the financial crisis of 2008 raises the question of how something so exhilarating could also be so depressing. Running a hundred miles an hour, and managing to capture the vast complex of relationships that constitute what cannot really be called the financial services industry (more exploitation than service), it's as intense a thriller as we've seen in a while. 

With the lovely spiritual director Karen Moore and amazing musician David Wilcox, I'm co-hosting a New Year retreat on the weekend of January 15th-17th. You're invited to join us! 

Staying at the Laughing Heart Lodge and Hostel just outside Asheville in Hot Springs, North Carolina, with a group of friends old and new, enjoying the landscape on gorgeous walks, hearing music and story, meeting locals, exploring how the stories we tell shape our lives - and hopefully experiencing a better story together! Great food, inspiring art, and beautiful journeys on foot will form the heart of this soulfully unique and transforming experience. A two day experience - for thirty guests only - that might just last for the rest of your life.

Let’s get this out of the way first: STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is about as good a variation on the familiar theme as we could realistically hope for, evoking the character depth, epic backdrops, and genuine pathos that those of us who grew up with it remember. The fact that such depth and pathos may not actually exist in the films themselves, but more in the projections of our childhood memories, is not to suggest that they’re not good movies. They shaped many of us - my early sense of physical perspective was deeply connected to the fact that my toy Obi-Wan was far too big for my plastic Star Destroyer; deeper still, observing Han and Leia’s screwball-serious dance may have been my first exposure to mythic notions of romantic love. And the epic backdrops are truly epic. Beyond that, the movies - at least the original trilogy - are immensely fun; at their best, sweeping action adventures with heart, and an invitation to consider what their creator George Lucas calls “a soap opera … about family problems”. Yes, I know that they changed the way films get made and released, but STAR WARS didn’t kill cinema. It just made a lot of noise, and crowded out space in which more diverse options would be available at your local theatre. And the last time I looked it was easier than ever to see small independent films (and to make your own). The merchandise juggernaut is another matter, and deserves attention; but we’ll concern ourselves here with the movie, not the money.

Criticizing PIXAR is a bit like saying you don’t like ice cream; not only is it not a popular position to take, it also easily results in self-doubt on the part of the critic. How can I not like ice cream? I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that the studio’s newest film The Good Dinosaur, while beautiful to look it, with a lovely score by Mychael and Jeff Danna, and totally convincing lead voice performance by Raymond Ochoa, is, like some ice cream, bad for your health. A lovely premise - the asteroid that caused the extinction of our large reptile friends actually missed, and a few million years later, humans are sharing the planet with tyrannosaurs, stegosaurs and, in the central character, an apatosaurus. Our hero Arlo is separated from his family, along with a human boy he calls Spot, and they have to find their way home. Challenges ensue. Both landscape and character look stunning, and there are some fun skits - especially when Sam Elliott shows up as a patriarchal T-Rex who also happens to be a cattle rancher with a cowboy drawl. But the story frame is superficial, and the moral beats troubling.