Screen
A pail of awful
Forget Jack and Jill and the fact that Adam Sandler plays them both and not particularly well in his new “twins” comedy. Al Pacino is almost reason enough to see it, all by his bigger-than-life self...
Farce gone awry in ‘Planet 51’
How might a teenager protect himself from that dreaded fate described in legions of sci-fi movies — the probe? If you weren’t thinking “champagne cork,” you were way off, according to the sci-fi kids cartoon Planet 51...
A sea of spider-people
Watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the single closest feeling I’ve had to the first time I cracked open a comic book, beginning a...
Keep calm and carry cake
They’ll be love and laughter / And peace ever after / Tomorrow, when the world is free —Vera Lynn, “The White Cliffs of Dover”
Frank...
Partly sunny
To steal from Mother Goose (don’t worry, she’s dead): When Cloud Atlas is good, it’s very, very good; when it’s bad, Hugo Weaving is doing a drag impression of Nurse Ratched. The ambition of writers/directors Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Twyker, working from David...
We are family
If necessity is the mother of invention, then Inez de la Paz needs to invent a new life for herself and her little boy....
Mama, have mercy
Horror films are often peppered with moments in which you wish your protagonists were just a little more bright or had planned things out a little better — “Don’t go into that basement” and “Don’t open that door.” Even the beloved Shining leaves moments of, “Damn it...
Requiem for a studio musician
Have you heard of The Wrecking Crew? The musical geniuses behind “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” “California Dreamin’,” “Good Vibrations” and more? No? Are you sure...
The eternal appeal of The Great Stone Face
Still wonderful, isn’t it? And no dialogue. We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren’t any faces like that anymore. —Norma Desmond,...
The black market meets the stock market
Killing Them Softly is an ambitious mashup of black market and stock market politics, wrapped in the guise of a straight-up crime movie. If that sounds like it’d be hard to pull off, it is. If you think it’s too much for one film, you’re right. Killing Them Softly ...
