The Nice Guys reminded me of a terrific Playboy joke. I don’t mean a specific joke (not that I could quote it here) but I have a feeling you know what I’m talking about: one of those things that’d make us guffaw and pause while leafing through a faded, ‘vintage’ back-issue, which is to say […]
Review: The Russo Brothers’ Captain America: Civil War
“War, what is it good for?” Despite the existential disgust expressed by Edwin Starr in that song all those years ago, there exist far too many affirmative answers to that question: it’s good for gunrunners, media outlets, separatists, posturing Presidential candidates and, clearly, for Marvel Studios — whose superheroes have never, ever looked better. Why, […]
Review: Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book
This isn’t your daddy’s Jungle Book. That applies whether I’m your daddy’s age and grew up on an oft-looped VHS tape of Disney’s 1967 animated classic, or if you’re my dad’s age and cherished the leatherbound Rudyard Kipling book which promised darker truths – though I choose to believe that Bare Necessities may well be […]
Review: George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road
Audacious, astonishing, staggeringly original. Here’s what makes Mad Max: Fury Road the greatest action film of all time.
Oscar column: Why we should be glad Mad Max didn’t win Best Picture
Cinematic history and myths are, more often than not, shaped by the better loser. Best Picture may sound like it, but it isn’t the biggest prize a film can win on Oscar night.
Oscars 2016: The most unforgettable moments
I once had the remarkable good fortune to be sitting unexpectedly in the Comedy Cellar in New York when a surprise guest was thrust upon us. The audience couldn’t believe it, and out strolled Chris Rock — an incendiary performer and giant comic superstar — who slayed. He was great and we were enraptured, and, […]
Review: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant
A true big-screen epic for the ages that doesn’t have all that much to say, but, by God, the way it says it.
Review: Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight
Journalism rarely looks as good as it does in American movies. This, I assure you, is not because journalism isn’t essential or noble or brave. It is every bit those things and more. Yet the finest, truest bits of journalism — the bits that topple governments, the bits that win Pulitzers, the bits that inspire […]
Review: Tim Miller’s Deadpool
You’re wrong about Deadpool, you know. Yes, you. I can see it as you start reading this review, smiling as you think you know what you’re in for. Think again. There are many kinds of films you may expect — as did I — but Deadpool, true to character, confounds. This is not an immature […]
Review: Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight
Quentin Tarantino’s latest film is his most unpleasant. The Hateful Eight contains everything we expect from the auteur — ultraviolence and memorable characters and shocks and profanity and long stretches of dialogue — and yet, while as indulgently Tarantinoey as it can be, this is a rough watch, a film meant to cause discomfort, to […]
