Screen
War, hot and cold, in ‘Underground’
Not every movie survives the baptism of time. Even award winners and those end-of-the-year Top Ten movies become buried under years of obsolescence. Which...
‘Astro Boy’ seems dated
Lovely dollops of wit and warmth float through the big screen version of Astro Boy, the latest Japanese TV cartoon to make it to the big screen. But the look, themes and slam-bang "Transformers" violence of that 1960s animated series make this every bit as dated as "...
Restless leg syndrome
Feel free to call director Steven Soderbergh’s latest film (and potentially last, if you believe his retirement threats) a wacky mallard because it is one odd duck. If a Hitchcock movie took a Dateline NBC segment behind the art house theater and got it pregnant, ...
Better under the bridge
Dreamworks seems bored with the ogre who laid the golden egg. Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the lucrative franchise and the first in 3-D, barely tampers with the Shrek formula (oneliners, flatulence jokes, pop tunes), and not enough to breathe life into ...
Passing jerks
Reduced to butt-baring eye candy, Passengers feels like Chris Pratt was made to do a Game of Thrones-esque “Walk of Shame.” What’s that, Chris?...
Pick a side
The year is 1918, and Red troops are rounding up the White guards. War is on, and the insurgents are to be executed. But...
‘Valentine’s Day’ an ideal date movie
When making movies, it's possible to have too much of a good thing...
Nobody puts Baby in the corner
Pica (Toby Smith) is an Oakland college student taking Polaroids in a photography class devoted to 35 mm. “I came here to learn how...
A portrait of change, a portrait of love
Richard and Mildred Loving just wanted to be together. They loved each other and wanted to raise a family and in 1958, the two...
Home viewing: Palme d’Or winners
The origins of France’s Cannes Film Festival lay not in La République, but neighboring Italy. Specifically, 1937’s Venice Film Festival, when Benito Mussolini stuck...
Out of this world
Another Earth is quietly and movingly out of this world. Director Mike Cahill has woven sci-fi imaginings and quantum physics theories of parallel universes into a provocative meditation on the prospect of rewriting your life history. It is no simple task to ...
