Author Archive

Forget War of the Worlds—when Spielberg wants to be, he’s a master storyteller in that grand Hollywood tradition of efficient, effective populism.

Despite Mick Jagger’s lively prancing—his energetic frontmannery—a Rolling Stones concert is above all a sonic affair, rather than a visual event. A concert film, then, would seem pretty straightforward, at best: something to hear, but not much to look at—the sort of thing that goes straight to DVD or PBS. Martin Scorsese, however, through his ever-moving concert cam, manages to make Shine a Light both.

Michael Moore has a knack for devising compelling theses on the state of American society and its maladies, but unfortunately he all too often undermines them with his style of argument.

A group of students, along with their professor, are filming a cheap horror movie out in the woods when news reports start coming in about the dead coming back to life.

Though set at a stadium and all about soccer, Offside offers only fleeting glimpses of the game; the big match takes place off-screen, watched by the soldiers obliged to guard the women through metal bars.

Oscar Week continues as we break down the nominees for Best Supporting Actor. Find out who we think will take home Oscar’s gold…

For American audiences, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days addresses the abortion issue with a measure of neutrality, without partisan determination anyway.

With Cassandra’s Dream, Woody Allen, still in his self-imposed London exile, forgets the diversion of his previous film, Scoop, and returns to the serious matters of murder, morality and the English class system.

“People will want to see this.”

Though set around the turn of the 20th Century, There Will Be Blood is, in its pitting of capitalism against revivalism, conspicuously more about the state of the union at the turn of the 21st.

If Starting Out in the Evening were much shorter, it would be more easily forgivable.

The filmmakers seem to be trying to leave it up to us whether the film is meant to be taken symbolically or not, but if we were to take it that way it wouldn’t make any sense.

Opening in the English countryside during the build-up to WWII, the film shows no sign of any expense having been spared in its pursuit of visual opulence.

The animated Persepolis marks the graphic novel’s transition to the world of movies.

The shorts collected in The Chronological Donald: Volume Three are uneven, ranging from the lovely to the disposable.

Two strangers find love through music — will we find love through DVD?

A taut and nifty melodrama-noir with a strong reactionary bent, The Reckless Moment is essentially about love and the the redemptive acts of selflessness it can inspire.

After at least a decade, if not much more, of lackluster films from Sidney Lumet, the fading titan has strikingly returned to form with a fiery, blustering crash. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is easily the best-acted film of the year, but what’s more is that it’s a sharp piece of cultural criticism [...]

Set in a small town, the film is populated by cardboard cutouts of your standard archetypes: the religious fundamentalist, the haughty fella from the city (black, natch), the reckless small-town simpleton, etc. etc.

Burton, from Sondheim’s source material (a helluva score), does a heck of a job balancing the unwinking bloodletting with a bit of dark comedy.