Screen
In space, particles accelerate you
At this rate, the next installment in the Cloverfield pseudo-franchise is going to suddenly appear as just a memory of you having seen the...
Fender blender
Everybody needs a little help. Writer/director/actor Dax Shepard could have probably used another writer, a third director (David Palmer already co-directed) and a better group of actors for Hit and Run, a movie that is a cinematic traffic accident with multiple ...
Control-Z Cruise
Every time Tom Cruise, the greatest modern matinee idol, makes a new movie, everybody rushes to fuse artist and art and spews out some variation of “I just don’t like him anymore.” America’s collective moral stance seems to be that we should never forget that someone...
We was smart once
Modern Americans re-elected a man who plunged the country into two wars, tortured people and destroyed our economy, all because George W. Bush was the kind of guy you’d “like to have a beer with.” But for a brief moment in 1972, America rooted for the smart guy. To ...
Cross-cultural animation
Five years ago, the Bristol, England-based Aardman animation folks — who created the stop-motion legends Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep and therefore are eligible for sainthood — made the digitally animated British/American co-production Flushed Away. Jam-...
It whistleblows
There’s a good movie to be made about the controversial whistleblowing actions of Edward Snowden. It’s a documentary called Citizenfour, and you should really...
Out with the old, please
Two years ago, with the world economy about to be credit-defaultswapped right in the kisser, the first Sex and the City feature made $415 million worldwide. Its pre-sold fan base, already nostalgic for Cosmopolitans, heaved a collective, economically envious sigh: ...
A contraption, but it works
Call it strangeness on a train. The highly gimmicky, very entertaining new thriller Source Code takes place mostly on a passenger car, part of the fictional Chicago Commuter Rail line, speeding toward the Loop carrying a bomb planted by an unknown terrorist. Our ...
A surreal take on a classic
Tolstoy’s classic novel of love and infidelity, Anna Karenina has been brought to stage and screen many times, often with mediocre results due to its complexity. Pay attention: It’s mid-1800s Russia, and Anna (Keira Knightley) is married to Karenin (Jude Law), a dull...
The limits of empathy
The man looks unassuming. He’s Teodoro Ulber (Nathán Pinzón), a middle-aged English professor, short and squat with proper manners and nice clothes. He’s timid...

















