Film/TV
671 results
Page 36
The case against Oscar-bait biographies
Bio(nit)pic
My beef with biopics goes way back to when I was 11 and Gandhi beat E.T. for Best Picture.
Articles
6 minute read
Top ten reasons you should watch the Oscars Sunday night
In honor of David Letterman — the Worst Oscar Host Ever — Armen Pandola presents a Top Ten list of reasons to watch the Oscars.
Articles
5 minute read
Iñárritu’s ‘Birdman’ (second review)
A bird’s-eye view
Few seem to have recognized that there’s a reason for handling Birdman’s entire narrative as a single take. That reason is simple: The filmmakers effectively personalize the camera’s perspective — someone, and not just something, is roaming around backstage at the theater.
Articles
6 minute read
'American Sniper' and 'Mr. Turner'
The eyes of Mr. Turner and an American sniper
How far can a movie go in representing the lives of real people?
Articles
5 minute read
Richard Linklater’s ‘Boyhood’ (second review)
The inexplicable canonization of Boyhood
Linklater’s concept was ambitious, and I understand the urge to heap accolades on his inventiveness. I wish more established Hollywood filmmakers took such creative risks. But that alone was not enough to lift Boyhood up from an interesting experiment into a life-changing cinematic experience.
Articles
5 minute read
Roberto Rossellini's 'Stromboli'
Once upon an isle
Roberto Rossellini’s restored Stromboli, a film as much about the director’s scandalous romance with Ingrid Bergman as about its plot of a woman struggling to escape a barren island in postwar Italy, has power and visual beauty despite its melodramatic elements.
Articles
6 minute read
Michael Mann's 'Blackhat'
Hacking into reality
The exponentially increasing interconnectedness and interdependence that computers and the Internet have wrought also allow the potential for damage to be ever more serious and substantial, with the real possibility of taking down not just a bank but an entire national economy, or the killing of not just a handful but thousands. In that dark sense, even Blackhat barely scratches the surface.
Articles
5 minute read
'Mozart in the Jungle' on Amazon
Who the hell plays the oboe?
Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle gives us that look through the eyes of a naif, a stand-in for the author of the 2005 memoir on which the show is based. The subtitle of that book — “Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music” — tells you a fair amount about the series’ irreverent take, but doesn’t convey the passion for the music that also shines through.
Articles
3 minute read
Peter Jackson’s ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’
Guillermo del Toro takes us for a ride
If you read The Hobbit and you’re still confused by the conclusion of this totally superfluous three-film epic, don’t worry. Just count the number of animals you can ride into war in Middle Earth.
Articles
5 minute read
Paul Thomas Anderson’s 'Inherent Vice'
Seriously weird
The trick to enjoying Inherent Vice is to just let the thing wash over you, laugh at the jokes, and don’t fret too much (or at all) about the details. This is substantially easier if you are a fan, as its protagonist is, of late-night movie marathons.
Articles
4 minute read