Clik here to view.
Sunday Crimes: ‘Spotlight’ Illuminates The Catholic Church’s Dirty Little Secret
It’s late November now… and, shocker of shockers, the Oscar race is still wide open. As usual, awards season is officially underway with hopeful contenders stacked one on top of the other. But less...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Orphan ‘White’: A Self-Centered City Boy’s Rude Awakening
This is neither the first nor the last time I’ll discuss awards season in relation to a movie that has maybe a 5% chance of nabbing an Oscar nomination. Every year, there are those surefire...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gun ‘Chi’: Spike Lee’s Rhyming Tragicomic Sex Farce Targets Gun Violence
Now that Mad Men is over, we’re seeing its star players pop up as supporting players all over the place — mostly (surprise, surprise) in the workplace. Elisabeth Moss was part of the team of duped...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Tens: Best Of Film 2001
This is it. This is my final retroactive Top 10 list, because it is my first. This was the first year I was in film school, and the first time I saw nearly enough films in any given year to feel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Force’ Majeur: Abrams Awakens A Flatlined Franchise
Recently, in this galaxy, I saw a film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I bet you did too. The film has already grossed a predictably record-shattering $240(ish) million in the United States,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Six Virgins, One Suicide: Coming Of Age In Turkey &‘Brooklyn’
America is a land of opportunity, beckoning thousands across the globe to come to these shores in celebration of freedom and liberty. If you’re a cute white girl from Ireland, at least. Yes, it’s an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Hateful’ Dead: The Eighth-Best Film By Quentin Tarantino
I’m not much of a Quentin Tarantino fanboy, because I’m not generally a fan of any filmmaker who keeps making the same movie, with little variation. I have this problem with Wes Anderson. Some people...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Tens: Best Of Film 2015
“Inspired by the true stories of daring women.” That’s the title card that precedes David O. Russell’s Joy, the story of an entrepreneur who becomes a titan of the Home Shopping Network. But it would...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bear-Man, Or The Expected Tragedies Of Awards Season: ‘Son Of Saul’&‘The...
(Plenty of spoilers in this review… though you’ve probably heard most of them already.) Here’s a fun game of “Would You Rather?”: 1. Would you rather be Saul, a Hungarian-Jew tasked with cleaning up...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An Indisputable Ranking Of Every Steven Spielberg Movie, From Fine To Phenomenal
Let me tell you about a guy named Spielberg. In my estimation, Steven Spielberg is the most popular, successful, and recognizable filmmaker of all time. He has more films in the AFI 100 than any other...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Not-Oscars 2015
Every year, the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences releases a roster of the pictures and performances they think are most deserving of accolades. And every year, I put together this list to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No, Seriously, Take Shelter: Jeff Nichols Cooks Up A ‘Midnight Special’
(I knew next to nothing about Midnight Special going in, and if you’re curious at all and haven’t yet seen the trailer, I recommend you follow suit. I’ll give a general overview and then a fair warning...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Doris And The Dudes: Showalter And Linklater Hatch Horny Spring Comedies
We’re living in a wacky movie world these days. The third highest grossing film of this year so far is also one of the biggest disappointments — Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice plummeted in its...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wrecking Bawl: The Car Crash Grief Porn Of ‘Louder Than Bombs’&‘Demolition’
There are roughly 3,000 automobile deaths in America each year, and it feels like we see at least twice that many in the movies. Car accidents are the go-to tragedy for Hollywood, even moreso than...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mouth A Little Weak: Chet Baker’s ‘Blue’ Valentine
The biopic is a well-worn genre, especially when it comes to musicians. Marion Cotillard, Sissy Spacek, Jamie Foxx, and Reese Witherspoon have won Oscars playing notable musical artists, and plenty...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Animal Attraction: Monogamy Is Tested In ‘A Bigger Splash’&‘The Lobster’
Tilda Swinton is a rock star. Few serious film fans would argue with this, but in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, it’s literally true. Swinton plays Marianne Lane, a musician who appears to be some...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where You Live.
Where you live. Where you learn. Where you pray. Where you drink. It’s happened again. We ask questions like, “How could this happen?” “When does this end?” and “What can we do?” and the answers are:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Perils Of Being A Wallflower: Outcasts Pay The Price In ‘Indignation’
Forgive me. I know it seems much too early to talk about the Oscars, but we’re getting into that time of year now. So far, 2016 has been all but entirely barren of buzzworthy performances. I have a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When We Were Young Podcast, Episode 1: We Got Cows!
Hold on to something! The When We Were Young podcast’s pilot episode glances back at everyone’s favorite cow-tossing summer blockbuster, Twister, to see if the windiest divorce drama of all time holds...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When We Were Young, Episode 2: A Serious Cackling
In October of 1994, three podcasters disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland. Police were baffled by the podcasters’ vanishing… mostly because they did not yet know what a podcast was. A...
View Article