Infinite Hope
I always write with one eye on how history will judge the movies I’m writing about. From that standpoint, I have a sneaking suspicion...
Pot P.I.
Here’s a great matchup of movie director and book. Thomas Pynchon’s 2009 novel Inherent Vice features the reclusive postmodern giant at his wackiest and...
Top 10 Movies of 2014
I didn’t put any foreign-language films in my list of the year’s best movies. How the hell did that happen? Did the entire non-Anglophone...
Screw You, North Korea! I Saw The Interview.
When last we checked in with The Interview, Sony Pictures had pulled the film from theaters and been roundly criticized for it. Since then,...
Today Was a Fairytale
Way back before Disney rejuvenated itself by making animated musicals based on fairy tales sprinkled with witty songs, adult concerns, and a wisecracking modern...
My Wife Could Paint That
The way to understand Big Eyes is not as a movie about art nor as a Tim Burton film, though it’s both of those...
Hard Knocks
Going into the newest big-screen version of Annie, I actually had some hopes for its success. Yes, the Broadway show is a saccharine piece...
Gold Mountain
In English soccer, when a high-priced newly signed player goes bust, opposing fans will sometimes taunt the player and his team by singing, “What...
Roughing It
I remember the first time I saw Reese Witherspoon. It was in the 1996 satirical thriller Freeway, and she was playing a juvenile delinquent...
Go Down, Moses
Hollywood’s last big-budget adaptation of the book of Exodus, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, hit movie theaters a full 58 years ago. By...
