Screen
Quirking on something different
To alter a phrase from Twain — who probably won’t mind because he’s dead — writer/ director Wes Anderson repeated history until he figured out how to rhyme. Barring a brief foray into stop-motion animation, Anderson’s oeuvre for the last decade redundantly hit the ...
BIFF: I Am Divine
The filmmaker John Waters and his muse, the larger-than-life drag queen Divine, are responsible for some of the most bizarre and shocking films of the ’70s. Divine’s turns in Waters’ movies propelled her into a star of the era’s mostly underground gay subculture, ...
Wonder Woman versus chauvinism
In many ways, the comic book character Wonder Woman is very much a product of the time in which she was conceived — World War II America...
A solid but soulless adaptation
Sleek and, until a stupidly violent climax, very entertaining, Unknown is the opposite of Memento. It’s about a man who knows who he is but everybody around him has forgotten, or thinks he’s delusional, or lying...
The Medicine
The sages call it by many names: yagé, ambiwaska, aioasca, but most know it as ayahuasca: a hallucinogenic brew drunk during a spiritual ceremony....
‘Would you like to play a game?’
They were friends in college, but it’s been 10 years since the whole group got together. Poor choices and hurt feelings came between them....
reel to reel | Week of July 21, 2011
Bad Teacher Cameron Diaz gets in touch with her bad self as the world’s worst teacher, an alcoholic, drugusing party animal who tries to seduce a wealthy new substitute (Justin Timberlake). Rated R. At Century, Flatiron and Twin Peaks — Rene Rodriguez Beginners ...
Wasting time and money
I wanted to enjoy Clash of the Titans. The previews highlighted some terrific special effects and Greek mythology is a fertile field of sweeping sagas, epic stories of men challenging the gods, and strange, amazing creatures. Two problems doomed this otherwise ...
R2D2 meets the AARP
First things first: although she’s only eight years younger than he is, nobody will accept that Susan Sarandon would want to kiss Frank Langella on his mouth parts. That premise requires a bigger suspension of disbelief than the rest of Robot & Frank, which presumes ...
