daily stream: why does a movie about depressed writers feel festive? I try to explain…
2000’s Wonder Boys is on Paramount+ in the US (and other services, too), and exclusively on BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Pittsburgh
Happiest Season movie review: don we now our gay apparel…
Finds something fresh and gently feminist in the tropes and claptrap of an overbaked genre. Stewart and Davis have terrific chemistry, and the supporting cast of modern legends of funny is to die for.
The D Train (aka Bad Bromance) movie review: when idiot men can do no wrong
Woefully bad feint at a dramedy in which everyone agrees the “hero” is a terrible excuse for a man… and he gets the message that he is awesome anyway.
Concussion movie review: heads up
A quietly horrifying, solidly entertaining medical procedural that makes no bones about the terrible damage American football causes to its players.
Jack Reacher (review)
Like a midseason episode of a basic-cable detective show you’ve never heard of.
The Next Three Days (review)
How do you manage child care while doing all the footwork required to plan your wife’s prison break? It sounds ridiculous, and it should be ridiculous up on the screen. But Russell Crowe makes it work in ways that far exceed any expectations we should honestly have for such a preposterous potboiler of a concept.
She’s Out of My League (review)
I must say that it’s awfully generous of Hollywood, after engaging in a decades-long campaign to winnow down the image of what it’s acceptable for a woman to look like if she expects to be received in polite company — or any kind of company at all, in fact — to finally acknowledge the impact this has had on real people.
Adventureland (review)
Summer of 1987. Oh, these kids are my temporal peeps.
Wonder Boys movie review: the writer’s life
Oh what a wonderful movie is Wonder Boys. Bitterly funny about the creative life and sharply observant of how inspiration can be both encouraged and crushed, this is one of the best movies ever about what it means to be a writer.
