The Last Five Years (2015)

Small, intimate, and beautiful are the words I could best use to describe Robert Lagranvenese's adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's stage musical. Sure, it hits a few narrative problems near the end, but the heartfelt music, and the power house performances from the film's leads, Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, almost make those snags seem completely insignificant. Watching these two characters move counter-sequentially (I may have made up a new word!) through the ups and downs of their relationship is utterly fascinating. Steven Meizler's camera floats around them, giving the film a captivating fly on wall feel that you don't normally get with movie musicals. The highest praise I feel anyone could can give to a film is the desire to want to watch again the moment it was over. And even if I didn't want to, which I did, I could at least listen to Anna Kendrick break my heart with "Still Hurting" for hours.

Grade: A-
3D: N/A
Easter Egg: No

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Jeremy Jordan
Director: Robert Lagranvenese
Writer(s): Robert Lagranvenese - Book and Lyric: Jason Robert Brown
RT: 94 min
Rating: PG-13 for sexual material, brief strong language and a drug image

Two Sentences:

What We Do in the Shadows (2014): This New Zealand made mockumentary about a group of centuries old vampires living in a flat together boasts a slew of hysterical performances, and an unbelievably strong script. The humour is fresh, the timing is perfect, and characters are a ton of fun to get to know through all of minor trials and tribulations that vampires must put up with in the modern world.

Grade: A