Gordon Gekko in the desert Southwest. There’s really no other way to describe this sparse but ultimately rather silly B-movie thriller. Michael Douglas rolls into… Continue reading
There are movies about good dogs (Lassie, Benji, etc.) and bad dogs (Cujo, White Dog, and so on), but it’s hard to accomplish both in… Continue reading
Ben Stiller spent years and God knows how many millions on his recent Walter Mitty remake, a statement movie that no one wanted to see.… Continue reading
A New York Times essay recently suggested that Hollywood abandon the so-called “four-quadrant” marketing plan, in which a single movie can supposedly attract viewers male… Continue reading
The last time Helen Mirren went up against the Nazis, in The Debt, it was really no contest. So you will not be surprised to… Continue reading
When private collectors are generous enough to send their art on the road, the catalogue already written, a bottom-line-mindful museum isn’t likely to quibble about… Continue reading
Have you ever developed a crush on a movie villain, the kind of Dr. Evil-ish sociopath you don’t need to marry, but just want to… Continue reading
Here is a romance that can’t happen, so why make a movie about it? In her early 20s, penniless Eleanor (Leighton Meester) desperately takes a… Continue reading
Blowing Up Cinema: The Art of Michelangelo Antonioni They don’t make ’em like this anymore. Jack Nicholson kept the slow, existential 1975 thriller The Passenger… Continue reading
Unless you readThe Guardian online or watch the BBC, you may not be familiar with the masterfully sly and self-deprecating English journalist Jon Ronson. Now… Continue reading
The setup here might promise routine road comedy: A sad and lonely Japanese woman, who somehow believes the 1996 Coen brothers movie Fargo is a… Continue reading
Well, someone’s been hitting the gym. Since Liam Neeson announced his looming retirement from AARP action movies, Sean Penn and his bulging, hairless pecs are… Continue reading
For young soldier Gary (Jack O’Connell) and most of his British squad, Northern Ireland is more than another country. Dispatched there to patrol the volatile… Continue reading
Judaism, like any major religion, has too much history to digest readily. For that reason, while the Seattle Jewish Film Festival includes far more than… Continue reading
Here’s an earnest new comedy of hybrid parentage: Dwayne J. Clark, a local businessman, is the newbie fictionalizing his past experiences in a men’s therapy… Continue reading
A beloved old neighbor, who occupies a rent-controlled apartment in a valuable Brooklyn brownstone, suddenly drops dead. Perhaps because she has nothing else to do,… Continue reading
Though a relatively gentle homefront comedy, John Boorman’s 1987 Hope and Glory advanced the revisionist argument that—to uncomprehending children, at least—World War II was like… Continue reading
The early history of Seattle is inseparable from the timber industry, since that was our first and most readily exportable commodity. After we cut down… Continue reading
She comes from the land of the ice and snow. We first meet Hera as a 12-year-old on an Icelandic dairy farm. Her beloved older… Continue reading
As I write this, the memory is fresh of Julianne Moore winning her Oscar—finally!—for mentally perishing in About Alice. It’s not a great movie, but… Continue reading
