Hello from Hollywood. We’re a day and a half into this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival and I’ve been able to catch three movies so far — perhaps not as many as I would have liked, but still a decent amount given the hustle and bustle of taking the train up from San Diego, sprinting […]
2013 TCM Classic Film Festival: Dispatch #1 Read More »
Not two minutes into “The Big Wedding,” we know what its primary purpose is: to allow Robert De Niro to earn a paycheck for minimal work. The film begins with lackadaisical voiceover from the legend-turned-professional-phoner-iner that’s reminiscent of most of the other roles he’s collected on lately, in “New Year’s Eve” and “Little Fockers” and
Review: “The Big Wedding” Read More »
The fourth annual TCM Classic Film Festival kicks off tonight in Hollywood and, despite a stellar lineup of old films on brand-new DCP restorations and glistening 35mm archival prints, plus famous guests aplenty, all I can think about is the festival’s main venue: Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. Or, if we must honor the recent naming rights
2013 TCM Classic Film Festival: Preview Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. I’m in Hollywood covering the TCM Classic Film Festival, so I’m short on number-crunching time, but I figure I’ll quickly throw together some analysis and figures in hope of sustaining my accuracy from last week
Box Office Beat: Weekend of April 26 Read More »
This week on the Critic Speak Podcast, we review “Oblivion” with Tom Cruise, talk about various news stories from CinemaCon 2013, and cover the new Blu-Ray releases “Gangster Squad” and “The Impossible.” Be sure to show your support for the show by subscribing and rating on iTunes, where new episodes go up the day after
Critic Speak Podcast: Episode 2 Read More »
Critics and casual moviegoers alike frequently complain of a lack of originality in the output of Hollywood and the broader film industry, the implication being that we see the same half-dozen stories rehashed over and over again. But what if the gratingly familiar nature of most new releases has less to do with story itself
Review: “To the Wonder” Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. Even though there’s a $120 million-budgeted science-fiction blockbuster starring Tom Cruise, who either used to be or still is one of the world’s biggest movie stars (depending on who you talk to), being released, this
Box Office Beat: Weekend of April 19 Read More »
If we are to accept that “42,” a Hollywood-financed Jackie Robinson biopic, was going to be manipulative no matter the talent involved—which is to say, dramatized to the hilt, with constant reminders (swooning musical score, over-the-top dialogue) that the sociopolitical stakes of each scene are higher than Cheech and Chong—then this Brian Helgeland-directed film is
Critic Speak turns one year old today—how time flies—and in celebration we are launching our latest new feature on the site, the Critic Speak Podcast. I’ll host this weekly show (a new episode every Monday night) with my fellow Critic Speak editor/co-founder James Frazier. We’ll cover an array of topics related to current happenings in the
Critic Speak Podcast: Episode 1 Read More »
Didn’t the “Scary Movie” films used to be parodies? It has been 13 years since the first one came out, so my memory is admittedly a bit foggy, but I seem to remember the Wayans Brothers taking pointed jabs at “Scream,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “The Sixth Sense,” and other ‘90s horror staples. They made
Review: “Scary Movie 5” Read More »
