Screen
You’re gonna go far, kid
Two years ago, Missy Franklin — a swimmer from Centennial, Colo. – caught the attention of the Olympic world. The freshfaced phenom became the first female to qualify for seven Olympic events and ended up collecting one bronze and four gold medals, and setting two ...
Like a Joss
This was going to be a rabid, frothing defense of the superhero genre, complete with impassioned pleas that appealed to cinematic intellectuals who are apt to dismiss such films. But Tom Hiddleston, who ironically plays the evil Loki in The Avengers, got there first...
God’s lonely men
For most, Taxi Driver is summed up by one of the most famous lines in cinema: “You talking to me?” Conveying masculinity and bravado, it readies angry men for battle. But it is misleading. It is an act, a façade. The truth is found in the line that follows: “Well, I’...
Mary, Mary, what you going to name that pretty little baby?
The infamous Beale Street belongs to the city of Memphis, Tennessee, but every city has a Beale Street. So claimed writer James Baldwin, born...
Robert Pattinson plays Jacob
Like The Notebook, but with an elephant, the unexpectedly good film version of Water for Elephants elevates pure corn to a completely satisfying realm of romantic melodrama. This adaptation of the Sara Gruen bestseller, set in a storybook edition of Depression-era ...
You can’t always get what you want
Tenet opens not with a bang, but with an explosion. Chaos coordinated with cinematic clarity courtesy Christopher Nolan. The setting is a concert hall...
Indecent bro-posal
That’s My Boy isn’t just so bad that you would rather play a fun game of “scratch my retina with chicken wire” for 90 minutes, it’s so bad that writer David Caspe and director Sean Anders should be legally prosecuted for crimes against humanity. If this is what we’re...
Lost in a sea of memory
Few films can announce themselves as succinctly with an opening image as Frantz does. In the foreground: green leaves and pink flowers waving in...
An indecisive mash-up
I take notes as I watch films so that I can remember salient plot points, great effects, and idiotic story twists. During The Other Guys, I wrote down “buddy cop film from hell.” That might well sum up the weird mash-up that is The Other Guys, a movie that can’t ...
8-bit-o’-honey
For a generation weaned on more Mario than Mother Goose, Wreck-It Ralph has been a long time coming. An 8-bit fairy tale with a burly bruiser in the role of the misunderstood princess, it skews a tad more prepubescent than Pixar but shares similar DNA. Writers ...
