Screen
Bad cops, bad script
Everything that does and does not work in Brooklyn’s Finest arrives in Scene One. A twitchy, cashstrapped detective played by Ethan Hawke is driving around with a shifty associate played by unbilled Vincent D’Onofrio. They park by a cemetery. (Warning.) Director ...
Are you not entertained?!
Another epic tale about incredibly powerful beings fighting against one another with melodramatic overtones? Ugh.” – Theater critics in ancient Greece reacting to the latest play about Gods and mortals Whenever a new cinematic comic book adaptation hits — and, ...
Home viewing: ‘Lucía’
Set across three time periods in Cuba — 1895, 1932, 196.. — Lucía is the story of three different women, all named Lucía, all...
Sentiment overshadowed by glitz
It is easy to watch Eat Pray Love, the pretty, languid film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling journal of self-discovery. Sun-drenched close-ups of asparagus drizzled just so on a plate next to very good-looking bread in Rome: aaaaah. A Balinese beach, ...
‘Saint John of Las Vegas’ has comedic timing
In "Saint John of Las Vegas," the hero's name is John "Alighieri," his job mentor is "Virgil," and the adversary they meet up with is "Lou Cipher...
‘Hockney’ takes a look inside the mind of a painter
I’m interested in ways of looking, and trying to think of it in simple ways,” David Hockney says. “Everybody does look, it’s a question...
You’re gonna carry that weight a long time
The world has not been kind to Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington). Though he had outstanding talent on the baseball diamond, he couldn’t break the...
All robots hate you
As a milky-white gross-beast skitters its way around a wheat field, getting murder-death all over gun-toting space colonists, the only question becomes whether Alien:...
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 ...
