Screen
Mary Poppins meets Charles Bukowski
T.J.needs a friend. His mom has just died in a traffic accident. His dad, Paul, has withdrawn into a haze of tranquilizers and group-therapy blather. His grandma is kind but housebound. The school bully likes pushing him facedown onto urinal cakes. The woman in his...
2012, will you marry me?
I want the 2012 year-in-film to have my babies. Heck, I’ll have its babies; it has been so durn good I’d totally go seahorse for it. Before I reduce a year that renewed my cinematic soul to a series of arbitrary numbers and rankings, a quick caveat: Because ...
Preserving the past
If you really want to see something spectacular this summer, head to Paris and take a trip up the Eiffel Tower. And don’t skimp...
All our yesterdays: ‘45 Years’ haunted by the past
Marriage: two people come together, make a proclamation of lifelong devotion and fidelity and try their damnedest to carry it out. For some, it...
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...
For its director and young star, ‘Precious’ is ready to pop
Precious is hardly the feel-good movie of 2009, but the people...
Replicant? No, repli-can!
It is profoundly insightful and upsetting that both Blade Runners explicitly tackle the sins of civilizations built on slavery and sexual subjugation without including...
Big movies come in small films
It may be Hollywood’s biggest night, but the Academy Awards are much more than a TV show that trots out Hollywood’s elite and validates...
In memoriam: Anna Karina
No one face embodied the
French New Wave more than that of Anna Karina. Born Hanne Karin Bayer in
Denmark in 1940, Karina made her way...
‘Ong Bak 2’: Thai fighters
Bruce Lee is dead, Jackie Chan and Jet Li are slowing down, but the world of martial arts never sleeps. Keeping everyone awake these days is Tony Jaa, Thailand’s biggest action hero, who returns to inflict more damage in Ong Bak 2: The Beginning...
British invasion in ‘Pirate Radio’
Any film that’s built around the music of the mid-1960s starts out with one thing going for it: a great soundtrack. That Pirate Radio goes beyond that and offers up an entertaining and poignant story about loss of innocence is what makes it a film well worth your ...
Direct action
As the human toll of global climate change comes into clearer view, attempts to find political or market solutions frustrate many environmentalists who call...
