Screen
A matter of persistence
The legacy of Orson Welles looms large in the history of cinema. So large, even Welles himself fell into its blackness.
“The word genius was...
Mutant fight club
Those who only know comic books through their (somehow) still-increasingly popular cinematic adaptations don’t know the dirty secret about the source material: Most story...
Don’t bother keeping up
Since The X Files, David Duchovny’s air of undentable diffidence has been his strength (to those who find him dreamy) as well as his limitation (to the others). In the social satire The Joneses, Duchovny plays a salesman who, at a key point, when he truly deserves ...
A contraption, but it works
Call it strangeness on a train. The highly gimmicky, very entertaining new thriller Source Code takes place mostly on a passenger car, part of the fictional Chicago Commuter Rail line, speeding toward the Loop carrying a bomb planted by an unknown terrorist. Our ...
Compulsive viewing
Let’s get this out of the way: If you’ve ever been in a car crash, The Road Movie is not for you. Much in...
Movie for schmucks
Dinner for Schmucks is a remake for schlemiels, or at least easy marks when it comes to formulaic Hollywood comedy. But the film’s peculiar sluggishness and nagging hypocrisy probably won’t get in the way of its popularity. It has a lot of funny people going for ...
Fast and cheap
Fast, cheap and out of control, and set in glamorous Grand Rapids, Mich., director Ruben Fleischer’s 30 Minutes or Less doesn’t even crack the 80-minute mark if you exclude the end credits. The same was true of Fleischer’s feature film debut, the very funny ...
Mean streets and dark nights
Film noir gained popularity in the early 1940s, just as America entered the war and the moviegoing public was looking for something darker to sink their teeth into. Lucky for them, Hollywood recently gained an influx of European émigrés fleeing the Nazi Party. They ...
The eternal charm of the go-getter: Part two
If great comedy must involve something beyond laughter,” film critic James Agee writes, “Lloyd was not a great comedian. If plain laughter is any...
Class warfare wedding
So few ensemble-driven African- American films make it to market — whether with familiar faces or unknowns — that the ones that do get out of the gate provoke a weird degree of scrutiny regarding what they have to say about the black experience. Who needs the ...
