It’s rare that a movie gets the life of an average Joe to feel right. Hollywood does a great job of blowing stuff up, choreographing car chases, and concocting shocking situations for gross-out comedies, but it’s an all too special
Way back in 1967, Hollywood released a “message picture” about the rapidly changing state of America’s race relations, with Sidney Poitier playing a black doctor who causes a stir by attending dinner at his white girlfriend’s parents’ house, in “Guess
A human being enters a lushly rendered alternative world, meeting an assortment of strange beings before having to save them from a vicious attack. No,this isn’t a review of “Avatar.” Rather, it’s a review of “Alice in Wonderland,” the new
Rarely has a movie so perfectly matched its title as the new buddy-cop movie “Cop Out,” starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan in the first film that veteran director Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Dogma”) has ever made from another writer’s script.
Teddy Daniels is a U.S. Marshal who’s having a really tough week. He’s incredibly seasick, yet has to ride a rickety boat across choppy waters to a place called Shutter Island. Worse, the foreboding location isn’t just a misbegotten piece
Perhaps more than any other holiday, Valentine’s Day is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. Unfortunately for prospective moviegoers, the new movie “Valentine’s Day” will provoke a universal sense of disappointment and dread. Packing 19 name actors from diverse age groups (high schoolers
As the central figure in the new horror film “The Wolfman,” Lawrence Talbot has suffered through what you might call a rough life. He’s stumbled across his parents just after dad brutally killed mom in the middle of the night,
Sure, you’ve seen it all before: an inexperienced nebbish who’s never experienced a moment of real danger in his life suddenly finds himself thrust into one life-threatening situation after another after meeting a crazed, adrenaline-junkie cop or spy. The two
It’s been an interesting past decade for Mel Gibson. He starred in a blockbuster comedy (“What Women Want”) as well as a powerful smash thriller (“Signs”) before deciding to take a long break from in front of the camera. He
Pairing Brendan Fraser of “Mummy” movie fame with Harrison Ford, the iconic actor behind Indiana Jones and Han Solo, might seem like a brilliant stroke of casting that would result in one of the greatest action movies ever. But in
Think of Christian films, and you might conjure up images of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” with Jesus being brutally pummeled and crucified until he dies. Or you might think of countless lesser-known movies filled with sappy storylines,
Some actors get famous for playing one unique type of character – Sylvester Stallone will always be the monosyllabic tough guy, while Hugh Grant is the highly sensitive yet adorable British twit. And Michael Cera has made a name for
In the new romantic comedy “Leap Year,” an Irish rogue named Declan is hired by an uptight American woman named Anna to drive her from the Irish coast to Dublin, in the hopes she can meet her long-time boyfriend there
When Oscar-nominated director John Hancock made the film “Prancer” in the winter of 1988, he didn’t realize that his tale of a small-town girl (Rebecca Harrell) who believes that one of Santa’s magical reindeer has landed in her hardscrabble Indiana
A great musical can make an audience’s spirit soar and get their feet tapping right in the theater, creating fantastical memories that can last a lifetime. With no effort at all, most people can conjure up memories of Gene Kelly
It’s the middle of the Christmas movie season, and you’re likely aiming to see escapist romps like “Sherlock Holmes” or family fare like “The Princess and the Frog.” Is anyone out there ready for a holiday film about the rape
Imagine the story of a soldier sent to fight native tribes for their land, but finds that once he actually meets and gets to know them, he respects them too much to follow through with his mission. Gradually he becomes
My father spent the first 31 years of his life in Communist Poland, leaving him with a distrust of major media that left him inclined to espouse this adage: “The only news you can be certain is accurate and untouched
There are few things I hate more in life than movie trailers that give away the entire plot of a movie. One of the things I do hate more is the modern Hollywood war movie, which is invariably anti-war and,
All your life, you’ve heard about the American Dream: find a wife or husband, pop out some kids, buy a house with a white picket fence and live happily ever after in the cozy embrace of suburbia. But what if
It’s the end of the world – and I feel haunted Imagine that the entire world as you’ve known it has come to an end right before your eyes. Almost everyone has died, or gone crazy scavenging for food, even
As much as I love writing about film and politics, my first and biggest love lies in writing humor pieces of all types: jokes for my own and others’ stand-up acts, screenplays and TV scripts that admittedly haven’t sold yet,
As much as I love writing about film and politics, my first and biggest love lies in writing humor pieces of all types: jokes for my own and others’ stand-up acts, screenplays and TV scripts that admittedly haven’t sold yet,
It all seemed to start so simply, as I watched this week’s “SNL” and saw an NBC in-house commercial bragging about how all this week’s Thursday night comedies will be packed with environmental propaganda, including an appearance from Al Gore
There are some filmmakers whom movie fans turn to for serious, introspective fare, like Oliver Stone or Lasse Hallstrom. Others are counted on as masters of the fantastic, like Steven Spielberg or Peter Jackson. And for comedy these days, you
Some lives slip through the cracks, people who you might pass everyday without giving a second thought. Precious is one of those people. Vastly overweight and carrying her second child at the far-too-young age of 16, Precious is an African-American
Give the military-industrial complex an unlimited budget, and it’ll find unlimited ways to kill people. From megaton nuclear missiles to Donald Rumsfeld’s allegedly humane, small-scale nuclear “bunker busters,” and from robot soldiers to Barack Obama’s beloved predator drone planes, our
Michael Jackson was the epitome of a human Rorschach test. To his fans, he was a Messiah of entertainment, seemingly able to transcend the mere mortal abilities of nearly anyone in the history of show business. To his detractors, he
There are certain mysteries that place a stronghold on the world’s imagination. The existence (or lack thereof) of the Bermuda Triangle, Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and UFOs are primary among these questions, inducing shivers in those who would like to
Humans like to think they know the difference between truth and fiction. But in the modern media age, even as we feel technology has made us more savvy than ever, there’s always a disquieting edge that makes us wonder what’s
There are some books that are so beloved and iconic, they’ll probably never be made into films. “Catcher in the Rye,” for one. Or “A Confederacy of Dunces,” for another. And for decades, the children’s book “Where the Wild Things
You’ve met couples like this before: longtime marrieds approaching 40 and facing stress from fertility problems, work-aholism, lack of communication or just flat-out losing the spark and giving up hope. In fact, you might have lived through these problems yourself.
Firing a red-hot cannon blast at both parties and the excesses of America’s capitalist system, filmmaker Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Capitalism: A Love Story” is also his most stylistically and emotionally mature work to date. Launching with a string of
Editor’s Note: After the publication of this piece we made an internal discovery that this interview was not a one-on-one interview between our writer and Quentin Tarantino, and that some of the questions attributed to “Big Hollywood” were asked by
Mark Whitacre had a boring job as a scientist and executive at Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest food-processing companies. Trapped in small-town Illinois hell with his wife and kids after previously living with them in the capitals
Some guys never seem to catch a break in life. Lance Clayton is one of them. In “World’s Greatest Dad,” the recently-released, extremely dark and sometimes perverse new comedy from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (we know, we’re just as surprised as
Joel is just an average guy, a quiet yet well-to-do American living in a small town who happens to own a flavor-extract company. He’d like to sell the plant, retire early and get back to a healthier sex life with
It happens all the time in Hollywood: A friend has a dream of making a movie and wants to hire his friends as cast and crew. But most of the time, those dreams stay dreams, as the money to fund
Take a ruthless Nazi leader who can order the deaths of a Jewish family with the same dispassion with which he requests a glass of milk. Mix his story with that of a Jewish woman who flees the slaughter of
Is it possible for a film to be both a brilliant, exciting piece of entertainment, and also a completely illogical piece of heavy-handed political propaganda? It is, if the new science-fiction oddity “District 9” is any indication. Led by a