Screen
The sickness unto death
What is there left to say about Woody Allen, the 79-year-old writer/ director of 45 feature films, a dozen of them masterpieces? Better yet, what does Woody Allen have left to say? Averaging a little more than a movie a year since his inauspicious debut in 1966 (What...
An unpretentious timewaster
Ten percent to the usual charities?” I love a line like that, smack in the middle of a scene featuring bank robbers dividing up the spoils. It proves they’re good guys at heart, willing to spread it around (if only for the sake of appearances) while blowing the rest ...
Funny or try
Vinny Thomas was only 15 years old when he first decided to give comedy a try. He was a high schooler at the Denver...
An indecisive mash-up
I take notes as I watch films so that I can remember salient plot points, great effects, and idiotic story twists. During The Other Guys, I wrote down “buddy cop film from hell.” That might well sum up the weird mash-up that is The Other Guys, a movie that can’t ...
A conspiracy full of holes
Heartbreakingly average, director Robert Redford’s The Conspirator errs in the way so many films do, especially films about unsung pieces of American history. It focuses on the wrong character — in this case the white male, i.e. the “bankable” one, instead of the ...
Bland, flavorless cheese
Sand dunes at sunset, summer lovin’ (had me a blast!), a third-act medical crisis and a clutch of letters designed to be read aloud in voice-over: Another month, another adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance. This month’s is called The Last Song, starring Miley ...
Poor 2013: Films in the coming year
Listen, 2013, you look cool. You really do, with your new Superman movie and lack of Twilight...
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize in Documentary at the Sundance...
A penetrating look at death and dying, How to Die in Oregon is an HBO-produced documentary that explores the lives of people suffering from debilitating terminal illness. Oregon was the first state in the nation to legalize physician-assisted suicide in 1994, and, ...
Roundup of summer 2015
When it comes to cinema, there is no such thing as dilution. No matter how many times a franchise is rebooted, a classic remade or an individualistic work of art sequalized, cinema will always remain as singular and potent as those who make it...
Define ‘run’
At this point, there is just one Liam Neeson movie: Taken a Non-Stop Run All Night to Walk Among the Tombstones 3. Neeson isn’t in the midst of some Nicolas Cage supernova, in which an actor’s need to perpetually work and “get dat paper” creates an acting black hole ...
Going gaga for Kojo
Writer/director Blitz Bazawule’s first feature-length film feels exactly like someone telling you about a dream they had. Only you’re actually interested in it, and...
