Quentin Tarantino would make an interesting case study for those interested in what and where Americans learn about history. Tarantino’s new film, “Django Unchained,” which takes place in the pre-Civil War South, is about slavery in the same way that his “Inglourious Basterds” was about the Holocaust, which is to say, it isn’t. This film’s […]
Review: “Django Unchained” Read More »
The product of two negative integers is a positive one, but the product of two cliché film premises is not an original one, as proven by “The Guilt Trip,” a relentlessly uninspired pairing of the road-trip movie and the mother-son bonding movie. When even the smartly cast Barbra Streisand and Seth Rogen–the quintessential Jewish mom
Review: “The Guilt Trip” Read More »
West Hollywood, 1979. One night in a gay bar, Paul (Garret Dillahunt), who has barely come to terms with his homosexuality after the collapse of his heterosexual marriage, locks eyes with drag performer Rudy (Alan Cumming). They have a sexual encounter in the parking lot and Paul gives Rudy his phone number. The next morning,
Review: “Any Day Now” Read More »
When designing high school history textbooks, publishers often incorporate small, colorful boxes filled with “Did you know?”-style trivia about the people and places relevant to the material at hand, so that the otherwise monotonous, dense reading doesn’t become overly tedious for the student. The new FDR film “Hyde Park on the Hudson” feels like the
Review: “Hyde Park on the Hudson” Read More »
With “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” Peter Jackson triumphantly returns to the franchise that made him one of Hollywood’s most powerful directors. The strengths and weaknesses are largely the same as those of his “Lord of the Rings” films, though “The Hobbit” differs in that it features a simpler, smaller story. This shift in scope
Review: “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” Read More »
“Life of Pi” is based on a beloved, bestselling novel, so the process of adapting it for the screen clearly came with a great deal of pressure to satisfy the existing fan-base by following the text to a tee. But most viewers who have no attachment to Yan Martel’s 2001 book will wish that director
Review: “Life of Pi” Read More »
Perhaps the biggest problem with Sacha Gervasi’s “Hitchcock” is its title, which suggests that the film is something more ambitious and substantive than it actually is. The singular surname suggests a definitive biopic–in the tradition of “Nixon,” “Patton,” “Chaplin,” and so on–full of insights about the life and career of the man who many consider
Review: “Hitchcock” Read More »
Andrew Dominik’s “Killing Them Softly” is a gangster film that presents the world of the Mob as a microcosm of the 2008 economic collapse that sent the United States into a tailspin. Its characters inhabit an underworld that resembles the mainstream in that there’s an economy, laws to regulate it, and men to enforce the rules. As
Review: “Killing Them Softly” Read More »
The second most memorable image in Al Gore’s popular global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”–bested only by the former Vice President operating a mechanical lift in order to stand at the top of a big-screen line-graph demonstrating the exponential growth of CO2 in the atmosphere–was the slide in his presentation that showed the dramatic receding
Review: “Chasing Ice” Read More »
The American film industry operates under the general rule that the narrative of any animated film must be simple enough for a small child to follow completely, a practice that harms kids more than it helps them, in that they are, as a result, very rarely exposed to the kind of sophisticated storytelling that might
Review: “Rise of the Guardians” Read More »
