Pain and Gain review: American nightmare
A bleak, bitter, wicked pleasure that holds up the underpinnings of modern America — self-help, Jesus, and violence — for ridicule.
Anthony Mackie
Gangster Squad (review)
Gangster Squad! In color! This is blustery postwar mythologizing about the violent birth of the modern metropolis, all pulpy-bright even when it’s night…
The Adjustment Bureau (review)
It keeps us on our intellectual and emotional toes as it blithely bounces us around thorny philosophical koans and lets us peek behind the scenes of the universe at the charming puppetmasters who pull the strings. But for the heaviness of the film’s metaphysics, there is something ineffably light and charming about it. If Frank Capra made The Matrix, it would be The Adjustment Bureau.
The Hurt Locker (review)
Riveting but not exciting, not in the sense that action movies have taught us to get turned on by the foreplay of countdowns and the climax of explosions…
trailer break: ‘The Hurt Locker’
Take a break from work: watch a trailer… I’m real excited about this one, for a couple of reasons. First: Kathryn Bigelow has demonstrated more than once that a chick can make a kickass action movie (Blue Steel, Strange Days, Near Dark) that is also smart and complicated and provocative and offers a new perspective … more…
dream cast: hypothetical ’21 Jump Street’ remake
It’s still Thursday for a little while, and that means it’s time to remake an 80s classic TV show or movie with an all-new cast. This week: 21 Jump Street, the 1987-91 Fox drama about young-looking cops who go undercover in high schools. Now that I look back at it, it was like Law & … more…
Notorious (review)
Gives new depth of meaning to the word “hagiography.”
