Film/TV
675 results
Page 49
"The Doctor': Julius Erving, beyond the hype
Flying a little too high
Julius Erving was once a great basketball player, role model and family man. In retrospect, he benefitted from the contrast between his relatively clean self and the coke-snorting brothers who were despoiling professional basketball's image before he came along.
Articles
4 minute read
Ten questions about 'Man of Steel'
Maybe they should call it Brains of Steel
You don't need Superman's X-ray vision to spot the logical holes in his latest film.
Articles
3 minute read
What I learned from "Rocky Horror'
A would-be faggot comes of age: How Rocky Horror changed my life
I wasn't gay in high school, but I was a freak— and The Rocky Horror Picture Show endowed my circle of freaks with a transcendent sense of our value. Or was it the other way around?
Articles
5 minute read
Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby'
The book was so much better
Why do film directors seem intent on trashing great literature? Baz Luhrmann's glitzy, elaborate version of The Great Gatsby is all self-important spectacle, and, like Joe Wright's recent Anna Karenina, a travesty of the original.
Articles
5 minute read
Learning to love "The Avengers'
What I did for love
The mindless “Avengers” films and their various comic-book spinoffs have already wasted hours of my life at a cost of hundreds of dollars, and there's no end in sight. On the other hand, they may have saved my marriage.
Articles
6 minute read
Mumia again: Stephen Vittoria's 'Long Distance Revolutionary'
The elephant in the room
Is Mumia Abu-Jamal a cop-killer rightly locked up for life, or a political prisoner whose conviction embodied a racist era in Philadelphia the city will never get past until he is set free? This new documentary argues strongly for the latter viewpoint but passes too quickly over the central question: Was Mumia guilty or innocent?
Articles
6 minute read
Robert Redford's "The Company You Keep'
Where have all the radicals gone?
Robert Redford's political thriller, The Company You Keep, tracks a former radical on the run from a long-ago crime. It's a liberal's cautionary tale about the dangers of assumed virtue, but not without a sneaking admiration for those who see issues in black and white rather than a mass of gray.
Articles
6 minute read
Danny Boyle's "Trance'
Hypnotists rule!
Even a flawed premise can be swept away by real moral quandaries, sparkling dialogue, charismatic actors and characters we actually care about. Unfortunately, Danny Boyle's alleged thriller, Trance, offers no such perks.
Articles
3 minute read
Hooked on "Project Runway'
My ‘Project Runway,' myself
Why am I hooked on “Project Runway” when I should be watching Public TV documentaries about global warming? For the same reason anyone gets hooked on a reality show. It's the psychodrama that seduces us— specifically, our identification with the players in these simulations of real-life conflicts.
Articles
5 minute read
Cate Shortland's 'Lore': Germany, year zero
Postwar Germany as a Grimm's fairy tale
Cate Shortland's Lore deals with a moment that Germany— and modern Europe generally— would prefer to forget: the immediate aftermath of the Nazi collapse. Its heroine is a 14-year-old girl who must lead her four younger siblings to safety in a world where rules have ceased to exist.
Articles
6 minute read