Screen
To see a man about a demon
Offering moderately scary Roman Catholic “gotchas!” to a global film audience of all creeds, The Rite comes from director Mikael Hafstrom, whose previous film was the stylish supernatural thriller 1408...
The truth of true love
You know the moment. It’s that split second when your mouth sprints right when your brain comes up lame. Suddenly, an average argument about one thing, one time, is now an argument about everything, every time. You’ve gone from questioning that evening’s plans to ...
reel to reel | Week of Dec. 1, 2011
Arthur Christmas Arthur Christmas is not a perfect gift, but it does feature enough holiday cheer and silly fun to make it more entertaining than 10 lords a-leaping. It helps that the film has a warm message about how tradition should never be sacrificed for ...
Missed payoff
Maybe in a few years, the high-flying machinations of notorious Washington puppet-master Jack Abramoff and Michael Scanlon, his partner in crime, will be funny. But even with Kevin Spacey trying his carnival barker hardest in Casino Jack, it still feels too painfully...
The burden of actual Christianity
Most praise for writer/director Jesse Moss’s documentary, The Overnighters, has rightly been focused on its Steinbeckian nature and explosive revelations about struggling workers in North Dakota. That wasn’t the big takeaway for me. The big takeaway for me was how ...
Reel to reel | April 26, 2012
21 JUMP STREET Two young police officers and ex-classmates go undercover at a local high school to investigate a dangerous drug ring. Rated R. At Century and Colony Square. — Los Angeles Times/MCT AMARCORD This foreign language Oscar winner is a semi-...
Faithfully following the formula
From King Lear to Psycho, some of the great popular art has confronted human evil and depravity with an eye as unblinking as Marion Crane’s after a visit from Mrs. Bates. By transcending boundaries of disreputable genres built on bloodlust, our shrewdest artists have...
Hardly dying
John McClane (Bruce Willis), the hyper-violent man perpetually wrong in place and time, has always been Rambo by way of “grumpy cat.” The only thing that makes Die Hard actually Die Hard is the surly sense of humor McClane spouts while committing copious homicides. ...
Shiver me tides
We first met Johnny Depp’s memorable Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, and it was a delightful film, a fun amusement park ride even more entertaining than the eponymous Disneyland ride upon which it was based...
