Screen
This year’s Oscar-nominated shorts are sublime
Just as the short story trembles in the footprint of the novel, the short film plays David to featurelength film Goliaths. But with the help of shiny, naked bald men, these wee bits of cinematic splendor step from the shadows and sling their short shots. And in the ...
I really don’t cartel do u?
If Fox News made Ambien, the opening sequence of Sicario: Day of the Soldado would be its signature hallucinatory nightmare. A classic “You got...
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: ...
Fun with Catholics and Communism
The funniest scene in Hail, Caesar! is a microcosm of the film’s overall genius. Foppish British director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) tries to get...
Why, Steve and Tina, why?
In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, Steve Carell recalls costar Tina Fey telling him: “I just want to go and do a movie and hang off the end of a car.” This, of course, is the problem with being associated with successful, classy, verbally driven ...
A live-action Looney Tunes cartoon
Wes Anderson’s cinematic style did not appear fully formed. It took a few movies over five years before Anderson locked in on formal compositions,...
Corporate fate
David Norris (Matt Damon) is a young go-getter New York politician who has a chance encounter with the quirky, engaging Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt), a ballerina who captures his attention immediately. Strange forces are at work and Norris is assaulted and wakes up in ...
‘Life in plastic’
Storytelling is creativity within limitations. And when your story takes place in a fantasy world — be it with dragons, lightsabers or toys —...
A lesserknown masterpiece
Every decade, the British Film Institute conducts its Sight and Sound poll of the Greatest Movies Ever Made. In 2012, the top two films were familiar: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, but third was a dark horse: Yasujirô Ozu’s 1953 ...
BIFF 2013: The man behind the Man in Black
In 2005, Jonathan Holiff was living in Los Angeles, working hard at his agency, The Hollywood-Madison Group. He hooked up celebrities with Fortune 500 companies for product endorsements; one of his biggest successes was getting Jessica Simpson together with Chicken ...
Hugh catch a predator?
If you like smiling and aren’t criminally demented, Prisoners is a damn rough watch. Stuffed to the gills with child abduction, overmedicated depression and familial implosions, director Denis Villeneuve’s bloated whodunit is a puppy suicide away from the most ...

















