Two and a half years ago, Judd Apatow released This Is 40, the most personal film of his career. He was anxious. He usually is. His default setting is inward panic. “I don’t know if people can understand the pressure to be funny,” Apatow says today, “just knowing how badly…
I dread explaining man-child dramedies to the ghosts of the dead. “You see, Grandpa, after your time, a generation paralyzed by the economy and indecision stopped growing up — and started churning out indie movies justifying why not.” In the ’40s, men fought wars at 18. In 1967, Benjamin Braddock…
Avengers: Age of Ultron is a complicated, ticking machine — a cuckoo clock under attack. Returning helmer Joss Whedon is earnestly trying to make a movie out of a bag of bolts: six stars, nine cameos, three enemies and at least 10 films to go before the climactic Avengers: Infinity…
Ex Machina is an egghead thriller with a scary selling point: Unlike Liam Neeson shooting up half of Boston, this actually could be taking place right now. It’s a smart film about the shrinking divide between man and robot. It’s also a hoot, an anti-comedy where all of the jokes…
The Longest Ride is Nicholas Sparks’ most ambitious novel. Instead of one couple, there are two — and he’s even stretched out of his blond/Southern/Christian comfort zone to make the older pair Jewish. For balance, and for pandering to the powerful conservative audience who made American Sniper a megahit, his…
Noah Baumbach has always had a dash of hypochondria, but in the last few years, his doctor’s visits have changed. “If you’re a worrier like I am, or Ben,” he says, referring to Ben Stiller, the star of his 2010 movie Greenberg, “you’re used to going, ‘Is this something that…
Get Hard, Etan Cohen’s comedy about a white stockbroker who hires a black man to prepare him for a 10-year stretch in San Quentin, is like a spoon that’s almost-but-not-yet sharpened into a shiv. With just a little more effort, it could kill. Judging by the poster, in which star…
Some years ago, I went to see Tom Jones perform. He sang all the hits, but I was unnerved by his new, walnut-brown goatee. It looked freshly trimmed and fake, like he’d ripped it off Evil Spock backstage. Superstars aren’t allowed to change. Even the fans who love them insist…
We’re two films in to the kiddie-dystopia Divergent franchise, and it’s still unclear if the sequel’s director, three screenwriters, eight producers and especially original novelist Veronica Roth have bothered to double-check a dictionary. Divergent, and now this new sequel Insurgent, tracks the monotone mishaps of Tris (Shailene Woodley), a very…
Jaume Collet-Serra’s Run All Night, a shoot-’em-up about an out-to-pasture hit man desperate to keep his boss and best friend from whacking his son, is humid with testosterone. It’s the sort of film where a woman accidentally caught by the camera practically apologizes and scurries away from the lens. When…
“Mark Twain said boxing is the only sport where a slave, if he’s successful, can rub shoulders with royalty,” says former heavyweight Mike Tyson, who once knocked out 19 opponents in a row. “Can you imagine that? Just by fighting another human being, he can meet a king, a prince,…
Start at the feet and pan up Adam Sandler: the sneakers, the pants that never quite fit, the sloped shoulders, the furrowed brow and world-weary sulk. He’s a cartoon man drawn the same in every movie, whether he’s in a lonely walk-up or a McMansion crammed with kids. Sandler plays…
It’s an ironic truth that directors fascinated by robots tend to make inhuman movies. From Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner to last year’s Transcendence, these stories that ponder the gap between man and machine often reveal filmmakers unsure of where they fit in — they get so involved in the question…
Ten years ago, Wellington, New Zealand, was less welcoming of vampires. When Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, two unknown comedians, walked the streets in velvet frocks and ruffles for a 2005 sketch, dudes would drive by and scream homophobic slurs. Says Clement, “We were constantly abused.” Over the next decade,…
Sport is a natural metaphor for war. Two sides in two colors face each other on a field, each with its pride and physical safety at risk. Their leaders scheme plans of attack, drawing arrows toward the enemy’s flank. And backing the teams in the stands — or, more often,…
If Grace Kelly had been raised by coyotes, she might have stalked the screen like Focus’ Margot Robbie, a va-va-voom blonde with bite. Robbie is too beautiful to play normal, too sly to play nice. Miscast as a shy saint in Craig Zobel’s upcoming Sundance hit Z for Zachariah, she…
Shove off, John Hughes. The DUFF, a high school comedy by Ari Sandel, opens by declaring that The Breakfast Club’s social categories are, like, way passé. Explains lead Bianca (Mae Whitman), “Jocks play video games, princesses are on antidepressants, and geeks rule the world.” Today, be ye goth kid, science…
Five years ago, four losers passed out in a jacuzzi, boiled back to 1986, healed their past wounds, rocked out to Poison, and returned to their timeline as gods. Thusly, Hot Tub Time Machine director Steve Pink was hailed as a minor deity: He’d taken a dumber-than-huffing-hairspray premise and made…
Even fans of Fifty Shades of Grey admit the book is a literary atrocity. Novelist E.L. James’s erotic reveries read like the rantings of a drunk yokel — less “His firm hands cupped my breasts” and more “Holy crap! He’s touching my boobs!” The story is simple: 21-year-old virgin Anastasia…
This year, Sundance started a week late to bypass Martin Luther King Day. Perhaps that’s why buyers bid on films like sprinters racing after lost time. Thanks to their spending spree, every movie on this list should eventually make it to a theater near you — or at least to…
Halfway through Laura Gabbert’s documentary City of Gold, a salute to Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize–winning food critic’s brother Mark reveals a dark family secret: Gold grew up devouring iceberg lettuce and orange Jell-O. Every day, we eat. It’s a must. And those meals tell a story: The peanut sauce…
Richard Linklater ended his feel-good Best Picture contender Boyhood on a high. His star, 18-year-old would-be artist Mason, graduated high school and was ready to conquer the world. But what if Linklater had kept filming? And what if Mason wasn’t an actor, but a real teenage boy? Meet Samuel Klemke…
