Screen
Rock ’n’ roll odd couple
Extremely raunchy, Get Him to the Greek is also very funny. Like the film that first paired Jonah Hill and Russell Brand, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the new comedy is unexpectedly sincere about the thing that matters most in a relationship: trust. It is also ...
And the nominees are…
Almost two months later than last year’s ceremony and encompassing two venues, 2021’s Academy Awards will cap the cinematic year that couldn’t get started...
Meta-references are not always good
In the first few minutes of Scream 4, the teenage girls home by themselves on a dark night are watching a DVD and discussing the merits and demerits of the Saw franchise, which one of the girls refers to as “torture porn,” and then brrrrrrrrrrrrp brrrrrrrrrrrrp goes ...
Jonze takes ‘Wild’ risks; succeeds
Truly, I am madly, deeply in love with the film version of Where the Wild Things Are. Not since Robert Altman took on Popeye a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail, ...
Hurts so good
Good science fiction makes you ask hard questions. Things like “What is the true core of human nature?” and “Do they really expect us...
BW BIFF Picks 2013: ‘The New Public’
In Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, the high school graduation rate is 40 percent. The New Public, a documentary by Jyllian Gunther, tells the story of a small group of high school teachers and administrators who tackle that problem by opening a small ...
God’s lonely men
For most, Taxi Driver is summed up by one of the most famous lines in cinema: “You talking to me?” Conveying masculinity and bravado, it readies angry men for battle. But it is misleading. It is an act, a façade. The truth is found in the line that follows: “Well, I’...
Way down Texas way
It’s 1950, and John Ford wants to make a movie: The Quiet Man, from a story by Maurice Walsh, about a retired boxer who...
On agents and agency
Melissa McCarthy is immensely talented, armed with a stunning repertoire of acting skills. So, of course, Hollywood sees her and claps its collective hands together, yelling “Make the funny lady fall down again!” Spy is writer/director (and frequent McCarthy ...
The bacon of blockbusters
Hands down, my favorite discussion in the wake of Furious 7 doing to the box office what Vin Diesel does to elocution (which is to say, stomping it to oblivion): “Do we really need another Fast and Furious movie?” No. No, we do not. We also didn’t need to land on the...
