Screen
Reel to reel | Week of September 19, 2013
Afternoon Delight Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) is a quick-witted and lovable, yet tightly coiled, 30-something steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’ bohemian, affluent Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right — chic modernist home, successful husband, ...
A jumbled mess
As a family demographic product, Rango has a million selling points, among them an unusually strong voice cast headed by Johnny Depp in tremulous-aesthete mode, a popular live-action director making his feature animation debut, and a twist on a genre temporarily back...
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...
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...
The reality of experience
“Say it, no ideas but in things”
—William Carlos Williams, Paterson
As the legend goes, when poet William Carlos Williams sat down to pen what would...
The show must go on—Dispatches from the 48th Telluride Film Festival
There was no show last year; it was called on account of pandemic. Just as well: Wildfires all along the West draped a burnt...
Homeviewing: Refugee-pers Creepers
The most satisfying response to a horror movie scare is not a jump, a shriek or a recoil. It is a verbal “Nope!” It...
Sex will kill you
Director Jonathan Glazer and writer Walter Campbell’s Under the Skin joins the smallest movie subgenre: brilliant but batshit insane...
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
When Avatar shattered box-office records in 2009, many
attributed the movie’s success to 3D’s profitability. And not just because
viewers were intrigued, but because tickets cost...
