Screen
Time crisis
For 30 years, Ethan Hunt has been living in an augmented reality. Everywhere he turns are deceptions, lies, trickery, false narratives and people who...
A woman’s place in cinema
There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman
cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no...
Realism thwarted
Made with or without U.S. Department of Defense cooperation, fictional films about the American military favor narratives in which (mostly) men buck authority, risk their necks in bouts of jealous infighting and go the lone-wolf route in pursuit of the enemy. Act ...
News-sploitation
Recently, CNN showed reporters physically chasing a woman connected to the Ebola scare. Not too long ago, a Fox News affiliate aired a suicide live on television. So, no, Nightcrawler isn’t farfetched. It’s perfectly fetched. It’s importantly fetched...
Watch This: ‘Master of the Flying Guillotine’
Master of the Flying Guillotine is Taiwanese director Jimmy Wang Yu’s 1976 sequel to One Armed Boxer. Yu not only directed and wrote the film but starred as the main character, a martial arts master who is stalked by a blind assassin seeking revenge...
Nothing left to lose
It was one of those moments. The kind where two historical figures crossed paths briefly and a simple exchange carries meaning greater than one...
For its director and young star, ‘Precious’ is ready to pop
Precious is hardly the feel-good movie of 2009, but the people...
Fade to blackout
The Hangover Part III is so jaw-droppingly terrible, America deserves an explanation. Not because this series has become some nation-defining work of art, but because it sure feels like writer/director Todd Phillips just told everyone who likes his films to go “make ...
Cons, vexing
Despite its title and the fact that Will Smith continually mouth-dumps exposition about how pulling a con requires attention to detail, Focus is hella sloppy. It’s not just that genuinely thrilling “who’s playing who” moments bump up against a holistically ...
