War is hell, but it might be even worse if you’re unarmed. That’s exactly how Desmond Doss ran into battle, and on purpose. A Virginia country boy and devout Seventh Day Adventist, Doss rescued nearly a hundred men in one of a nasty war’s nastiest patches of scorched earth without firing a shot. It’s through […]
Review: “Hacksaw Ridge” Read More »
There’s a scene in Olivier Assayas’ recent movie “Something in the Air,” about the youth culture movements in France in the years following the sociopolitically tumultuous Summer of 1968, in which a group of filmmakers premiere their latest activist work on Laos. Its conventional essayist presentation prompts an audience member to challenge, “Shouldn’t revolutionary cinema
Review: “The Internship” Read More »
It’s a short (relatively speaking) and sweet episode of the Critic Speak Podcast this week, as James and I keep it to reviews of the new horror-thriller “The Purge,” starring Ethan Hawke, and the new comedy “The Internship,” starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. We’re pretty much in agreement on the former, but we split
Critic Speak Podcast: Episode 9 Read More »
Hello and welcome back to Box Office Beat, the column in which I predict the upcoming weekend’s box office results. After sustaining a pretty strong accuracy record this summer, I finally screwed the pooch last weekend when I predicted “Now You See Me” would tank (it was an unexpected hit and grossed double my guess)
Box Office Beat: Weekend of June 7 Read More »
“Starbuck” has a comic premise that Kevin Smith might envy: After years of donating sperm, a truck driver discovers that he has sired more than 500 kids—and now 142 of them want to know the identity of their prolific dad. At first glance, this French-Canadian production fits cozily into the present American trend of building
Review: “Starbuck” Read More »
In the wake of an horrendous massacre that rendered any attempt to predict the box office not only futile, but completely inconsequential, the most compelling box office question-related this weekend is: “Will Aurora have long-term effects on moviegoing?” While many were not deterred by the tragedy and still went out to see “The Dark Knight
Box Office Beat: Weekend of July 27 Read More »
There is a potentially huge movie called The Watch releasing this summer that has been floating under the radar. Why? Because the studio, 20th Century Fox, was reticent to promote it under its previous title, Neighborhood Watch, with the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case still making headlines. Well, now the movie has its new title and a redband trailer,
Redband Trailer – The Watch Read More »
