Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. Apologies for my unannounced absence last week; I was out of town at my graduate school orientation, so I barely had time to choke out reviews of “The Croods” and “The Place Beyond the Pines,” […]
Box Office Beat: Weekend of April 12 Read More »
At the exact same time that “Evil Dead” first unspooled on over 3,000 screens across the country—last Thursday at 10 p.m.—NBC premiered another new spin on a horror staple, the series “Hannibal.” This was perhaps the most gruesome hour in the history of network television, complete with a murder re-enactment, the discovery of corpses, the
Review: “Evil Dead” Read More »
Derek Cianfrance’s sprawling, epic “The Place Beyond the Pines” is Capital-A Ambitious filmmaking of proportions we haven’t encountered in a project with Hollywood stars since “The Tree of Life” a few years back. Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement—Cianfrance’s focus is smaller than Terrence Malick’s, which amounted to no less than the breadth of Creation—but still,
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There is no doubt that DreamWorks has established itself as a film-brand nearly as recognizable as Pixar, but the value of such is debatable, given that the brand is essentially “The Big Animation Studio That Isn’t As Good as Pixar.” That’s not to say that the animators at DreamWorks don’t execute a good idea well
Review: “The Croods” Read More »
While Tyler Perry’s five previous “serious” movies (that is to say, those that do not star Madea) contained no shortage of melodramatic plot developments—each boasts an amount comparable to that of an entire season of the average soap opera—“Temptation” marks the filmmaker’s first attempt at an all-encompassing, big twist. He fails miserably. Any viewer with
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The first sequence of Harmony Korine’s devilishly good new film “Spring Breakers”—comprised of intimate views of scantily clad, young female body-parts on a Florida beach, most of them gyrating—perfectly encapsulates the film’s modus operandi. This type of establishing shot has become commonplace in T&A-focused cinema, like the latest “Porky’s” knockoff (whatever that was) — to
Review: “Spring Breakers” Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. After a slow start, it looks like we’re finally in a financially successful part of the year for Hollywood, with the recent big openings of “Oz the Great and Powerful,” “The Croods,” and the surprise
Box Office Beat: Weekend of March 29 Read More »
“The Silence” is built around a novel idea: to depict the effect of a murder (two, actually) on everyone immediately impacted by the crime. We spend what seems like equal time with the murderer, his accomplice, the investigators, and the parents of the victims. The film is told with a surprising amount of empathy for
Review: “The Silence” Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office grosses. Four new wide releases hit the multiplex tomorrow, the 24th birthday of yours truly, so let’s not dilly-dally. It’s time to crunch some numbers. Undoubtedly the highest-profile opener is DreamWorks Animation’s “The Croods,” which is
Box Office Beat: Weekend of March 22 Read More »
As the San Diego Latino Film Festival enters its final weekend, there’s still plenty of good stuff left to see (I have five selections slated for today and tomorrow). It’s been tough to find time to write about the festival films I’ve already seen—in addition to my usual load of regular screenings and reviews, I’ve
SDLFF 2013: Dispatch #3 — “¡Atraco!” and “Post Tenebras Lux” Read More »
