TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

Though Carey Mulligan receives the top credit on the film's official poster, Dee Rees's new Netflix film is truly an ensemble picture. Everyone gets a chance to shine here, and that doesn't mean one character gets his/her "Oscar moment" where they deliver a teary-eyed monologue and then we can forget about them. Like life, there truly is no main character, and Rees mines this southern WWII character study for everything that it's worth: Mudbound is a rich, tragic success. The film is nearly deceptive in its straightforwardness. We see Laura (Mulligan) meet/be courted by a man she's not particularly in love with, Henry (Jason Clarke). She'd honestly be more interested in dancing with his war-bound brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), a charismatic drinker. After marrying, the McAllan clan (including Henry's prejudiced father, played by Jonathan Banks) move to a farm in Mississippi after being duped. There they share the land with tenant farmer Hap (Ro...

It's been a busy past few weeks, but I've had time to check out one of my biggest misses from 2013's Oscar season, starring an Oscar in it, and that's the Coen brother's Inside Llewyn Davis . There was critical vocalization against this being snubbed in this month's ceremonies, only getting nods for its cinematography and sound mixing, losing both to that little outer space movie. Well, going inside Inside Llewyn Davis , I can see both sides of this heavily polarized film. First off, it's for sure a Coen brother's movie. It's quirky, has their signature wit, inspired music and John Goodman. All of those things are its strengths. The cinematography is initially infuriating: why have it so dimly lit you sometimes literally can't see what's going on at nighttime on the screen? But then it hit me: it was an intentional choice. The life of Mr. Davis can certainly not be interpreted as a positive one, to himself or to the nearly parasitic relatio...

Here's the irony I had walking into Baz Lurhmann's "The Great Gatsby:" most people who I've talked to refer to "Gatsby" as that book that they had to read in their high school English class.  As someone who's currently enrolled in a high school English class...I've never read "The Great Gatsby," mostly because I'd assumed we'd have gotten to it by now, but...nope.  We did however watch half of the 1974 Jack Clayton version starring Robert Redford, which was, to say the least, romantic but dry.  I was hoping this version wouldn't share these undesirable qualities. Luhrmann, the real star of the film Wow, is it good to be right. Luhrmann's "Gatsby," which was moved from December 2012 to now for some reason, is a gorgeous film with enormous scope and, dare I say, brave decisions.  All my peers had raved about the "Gatsby" adaptation, but then again they did the same for "Iron Man 3," and ...