Screen
Salute your shorts
Past, present and future moviemakers will gather on March 12 at the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard to celebrate the best of 2022. Ten...
Indifference wins the day
The best romantic comedies have a blithe, take-it-or-leave-it spirit. Larry Crowne has the opposite. It’s the neediest movie of 2011, and one of the phoniest...
‘Violence motherf*ckers!’
Not every director starts a scene by yelling, “Action!” Clint Eastwood gently whispers, “When you’re ready,” while others don’t even bother calling it. Sam...
Mainline it
I’m not going to take any chances by coming at this in clever fashion: Go see Dope. See it now. See it and reward filmmakers speaking truth for passionately reminding us that unique and original voices are the soul of cinema. If Jurassic World is how the industry ...
Where the coconuts are
Zama — the latest from Argentinean writer/director Lucrecia Martel — opens with a parable: There is a fish, a long-suffering fish, which spends its...
Laugh is a battlefield
It’s said the formula for comedy is tragedy plus time. But sometimes, when the tragedy is big enough, time moves too slowly and comedy must be found sooner...
‘The Crazies’ has some scares, but not enough
The two stupidest words in the history of horror movies...
Wherefore art thou, Magilla Gorilla?
San Andreas and Jurassic Park III were provided abstinence-only education, didn’t use intellectual property protection and had an illegitimate Rampage baby. Oh yeah, while...
In search of a harmonious web of life
Words, for better or worse, shape our perception of the world. Some,
like death and decay, carry negative connotations. Hearing them conjures images
of mortality, finality,...
Magic needed
I really liked Fantasia (1940) as a kid and recall being amazed at how well the music and animation synchronized in one of the most trippy of the Disney animated films. The centerpiece of Fantasia was the Sorcerer’s Apprentice scene, where Mickey Mouse used magic ...
