Screen
You ain’t seen nothing yet
"It ain’t like it used to be. But it’ll do.” So says one grizzled old timer to another at the end of 1969’s The...
A thriller minus the thrills
When Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, Ciaran Hinds and this year’s breakout actress, Jessica Chastain of The Tree of Life and The Help, can’t make much out of a political thriller, you know something’s off with both the political and the thriller components...
The show must go on—Dispatches from the 48th Telluride Film Festival
There was no show last year; it was called on account of pandemic. Just as well: Wildfires all along the West draped a burnt...
Repo this film
Repo Men was awful. Graphic, bloody and with a staggering body count, this is all that’s wrong with Hollywood action films, a glossy sheen on a completely vapid, empty story that works against itself in scene after scene. Then, the worst of all is the surprise ...
Hot dino-on-dino action
Hand a kid two dinosaur toys. Said kid will not use them to contemplate evolutionary biology. Said kid will smash the two of them together, simulating an epic dino-smackdown while emitting a likely annoying reptilian howl. Jurassic World is that but with a $150 ...
Hard not to Laika
"Show your work.”
That statement is both an admonition given by rigid mathematics instructors and part of the reason why stop-motion animation continues to captivate....
‘Armored’: Terrible tough guys
Ever wonder what kind of guy drives an armored car full of cash? Yeah, I never did either, but that’s the environment that Armored presents us with: a bunch of edgy, tough-guy losers who somehow have ended up as employees of Eagle Shield Security...
Leni Riefen-stalling
On the one hand, any film subtitled “Part 1” is a naked cash grab. On the other hand, shut up and take my money, Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1...
The dreaded ’20’
It´s a close call, given the lousiness and the scolding tone of much of her material, but Anna Faris survives What’s Your Number? with eccentric comic charm intact. Dumb film; smart comedienne...
