A Most Violent Year (2014)

On the surface, A Most Violent Year is markedly different from Chandor’s first two features – about Wall Street and the ocean, respectively – but it shares with them a disinterest in traditional dramaturgy; these films are political statements first, stories second. Margin Call was an excoriation of self-interested capitalism on the cusp of devastation,…

Kirsten Dunst and Viggo Mortensen in The Two Faces of January (2014)

The Two Faces of January (2014)

The Two Faces of January is set in 1962, but it could just have easily been made in the same year, or even a decade earlier. The film – from Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini – is a close facsimile of the thrillers of half a century ago, to the point where it could be a…