Screen
Five unforgettable films from a master
Mike Nichols was a rare one. He began in comedy, moved to the stage and then made his way to Hollywood, where he forever changed the face of cinema. Sandwiched between the French New Wave and the New American Cinema, Nichols helped bring movies back into the adult ...
Winter camp
Your tolerance for writer/ director Gregg Araki’s White Bird in a Blizzard hinges on your appreciation (or lack thereof ) for campy content. If you were weaned on John Waters, you’ll gobble up every cheese-tastic second, from a horny housewife lusting towards her ...
Let’s not be gods
Midway through Ex Machina, writer/director Alex Garland’s taut thinker, super genius inventor Nathan (Oscar Isaac) tells human guinea pig Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) that the invention of artificial intelligence was always a matter of when, not if. Here’s a thought: ...
On agents and agency
Melissa McCarthy is immensely talented, armed with a stunning repertoire of acting skills. So, of course, Hollywood sees her and claps its collective hands together, yelling “Make the funny lady fall down again!” Spy is writer/director (and frequent McCarthy ...
We was smart once
Modern Americans re-elected a man who plunged the country into two wars, tortured people and destroyed our economy, all because George W. Bush was the kind of guy you’d “like to have a beer with.” But for a brief moment in 1972, America rooted for the smart guy. To ...
Son shines
Like death, taxes and CBS creating another spectacularly unfunny comedy, reboots are an inevitable part of life now. To resist them isn’t merely tilting at windmills, it’s tilting at windmills you then go ahead and buy anyway. Instead, let’s just get writer/director ...
Awake my soul
Nostalgia, like love, erodes rough edges; it fills in gaps, paints clean what was scuffed and forgives copious small sins in the name of happiness. I’m sorry, but none of the Star Wars movies have been perfect. Although some are demonstrably (and laughably) worse, ...
Jacko, through the eyes of his estate
How much of Michael Jackson’s This Is It can we believe...
Brotherly love
A mid all the promotional noise for Up in the Air and Avatar and the rest, it’s easy to overlook a drama like Brothers, with its plain-spoken title and stern subject matter...
The movie year in review
Paul Newman died, James Cameron came out of retirement and Quentin Tarantino...
‘Sherlock Holmes’ looks good, but no reinvention
I've been a fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detail-oriented detective, Sherlock Holmes, for as long as I can remember. The Holmes canon is extraordinarily rich and directors as talented as Billy Wilder and Barry Levinson have tackled it with varying levels ...
