Film
Zero Dark Thirty: Jessica Chastain Vows to Kill Osama Bin Laden
Just so you know, it’s going to take a while,” says the CIA officer to his newly arrived…
Scott Foundas
Film
Django Unchained: Tarantino Rewrites Antebellum History
Watching Django Unchained, it’s easy to imagine that Quentin Tarantino had such a blast making Inglourious Basterds that he decided to…
Film
Les Miserables: Yes, Even Russell Crowe Sings
You can hear the people sing—really hear them—in the long-gestating screen version of that Broadway juggernaut Les Misérables.…
Film
Film: Peter Jackson’s Huge-Ass Hobbit
Peter Jackson's new Tolkien adaptation has been supersized for three holiday seasons.
Film
Paul Thomas Anderson on The Master
“I’ve made six movies, and I feel like I’m only just finally figuring out how this business fucking…
Film
On Its Centennial, Paramount Pictures Celebrates Its Peak: The 1970s
It’s a warm spring evening on the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood, and the crowd jostling for hors…
Film
A Single Man: Groomed to Death
Tom Ford applies too much polish to a Christopher Isherwood novel.
Film
It’s Complicated: Empty Nest
Catering to female filmgoers of a certain age, Nancy Meyers keeps making the same movie over and over…
Film
The Princess and the Frog: Disney Runs Afoul of Race
Six decades after unleashing the persistent NAACP bugaboo Song of the South (1946), that peculiar cultural institution known…
Film
Fantastic Mr. Fox: George Clooney Wants to Steal Your Chickens
Given his preference for static, symmetrical, scrupulously color-coordinated and art-directed compositions, it’s less surprising that Wes Anderson has…
Film
Red Cliff: John Woos Shorter Cut Is Still Too Long
After a decade navigating Hollywood, John Woo returned to China to make his latest film, but scale back…
Film
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire: A Big Serving of Urban Misery
In her broad outlines, Claireece Precious Jones risks sounding like the epitome of ghetto cliché: an obese, illiterate…
Film
Gentlemen Broncos: Only Jemaine Clement Makes It Watchable
Nothing if not consistent, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre director Jared Hess once again presents adolescence as a…
Film
The Fourth Kind: Milla Jovovich Is a Doctor? May We Check Her Credentials?
Seventy-one years after Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast snookered a gullible American public with its…
Film
An Education: The Decade She Became a Woman
The title is a double entendre in An Education, the film version of British journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir…
Film
Import/Export: Ugliness on Both Sides of the Old Iron Curtain
Like its bifurcated title, Ulrich Seidl’s film offers an exercise in parallel storytelling, tracing the journeys of Olga…
Film
Irene in Time: Henry Jaglom Refuses to Retire
Casually dismissed by those who place a premium on things like narrative, visual lucidity, and editorial smoothness, writer/director/emotional…
Film
Crude: Our Thirsty SUVs Destroy Latin America
Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink. Why? Because it’s thick with sludge. Moving briskly through…
Film
PICK Somers Town: An Adorable Boy Lost in the Big (Not So Bad) City
Commissioned by the Eurostar train company as part of the promotional campaign for its new high-speed rail service…