When first-time director Gillian Robespierre’s festival favorite Obvious Child makes its theatrical debut in June, it could herald the sweetest, funniest, most unassuming cinematic revolution in years. Starring former Saturday Night Live bit player Jenny Slate in a ravishing star turn, the romantic comedy quickly grabbed attention at Sundance for…
Why can’t women stay friends? That’s a trick question, of course, but also one that British actresses Emily Mortimer and Dolly Wells lifelong pals in real life attempt to answer earnestly and honestly in their new HBO cringe comedy Doll & Em. In the sixepisode series, Mortimer and…
The Chicano labor leader César Chávez can now join Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela in the pantheon of heroes whose world-altering achievements are dutifully recounted in timid, lifeless films any substitute can pop into the school DVD player when the regular history teacher is out. With César Chávez, Mexican director…
(Spoiler alert: The following piece discusses up to the February 16 episode of Looking.)HBO’s Looking has had a tough time winning over its intended fans. Upon its premiere, Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak yawningly summed up the political achievement of creator Michael Lannan’s wonderful half-hour dramedy about three homosexual men in San…
The great sins of the 20th century are already too many to list, but let us note one more: the abduction of infants from mothers deemed unworthy or undesirable by governments and religious institutions. Thousands of children were kidnapped from leftist parents during Argentina’s and Spain’s respective dictatorships, while children…
Few men wear a dress as meaningfully as comedian Chris Lilley. Since 2005, he has sported the pinstriped schoolgirl uniforms of his native Australia to play Ja’mie King, a perfect little monster created by an ungodly mix of wealth, vapidity, and cheerful cruelty. Ja’mie returns to HBO on November 24…
Mild spoilers up to The Bridge’s ninth episode below. Artisanal murders are all the rage these days. On Showtime’s Dexter, NBC’s Hannibal, and Fox’s The Following, small-batch, labor-intensive, sold-with-a-story slaughters have become TV’s equivalent of the Cronut. Handsome, intelligent, and mannered as court eunuchs, serial killers have become the new…
Forbidden fruit has never seemed so poisonous than in Thanks for Sharing, a remarkably sensitive and surprisingly romantic ensemble drama about sex addiction. A winsome mix of funny, harrowing and smart, it’s most commendable for making characters who are addicted to bad behavior — and who refuse to blame themselves…
Short Term 12 is the kind of film that sounds agonizingly depressing on paper but mesmerizes onscreen. It’s a delicate yet passionate creation, modest in scope but almost overwhelming in its emotional intricacy, ambition and resonance. Easily one of the best films so far this year, it’s a nearly perfect…
Like so many screenplays, The World’s End has its origins in a Starbucks. As director Edgar Wright tells it, the ideas for next week’s sci-fi action-comedy starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost came to him while shooting the trio’s last film, the buddy-cop parody Hot Fuzz. That film takes place…
If there’s one nuance mainstream comedies have yet to learn, it’s that “empathetic” need not mean “likable” — audiences can feel for characters they don’t necessarily want to be. The hit black comedy Horrible Bosses, which had three angry underlings plotting murderous vengeance against their you-know-whats, should have been a…
This article contains major spoilers. A white suburban teen, urged on by friends, makes the decision to finally get laid, maybe by the end of summer. That’s the premise of Sixteen Candles, American Pie, Superbad, and now The To Do List. Comedy pin-up Aubrey Plaza gives a characteristically low-wattage performance…
Friends ended less than a decade ago, but it’s already a relic of a bygone era — a critically respected network sitcom that enjoyed massive ratings. That’s the central irony of the Must-See TV show’s legacy: It was one of the last programs to enjoy a national audience before cable…
Nat Faxon and Jim Rash didn’t set out to make a comedy about divorce. Eight years ago, when the improv-comedians-turned-actors-turned-Oscar-winning-screenwriters started writing a coming-of-age script based on a particularly upsetting moment from Rash’s childhood, they just wanted a happy ending. Yet almost all of the characters in The Way, Way…
Though the script includes bits and pieces of writer-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s real childhoods, The Way, Way Back is a slick debut that feels like a recycling of familiar coming-of-age materials. It even shares with The Descendants, for which Faxon and Rash won an adapted screenplay Oscar, the…
Last week, EW columnist Mark Harris tweeted a statistic disturbing to anyone who cares about gender equality on the big screen: “It’s now been 61 days since the last wide release of a major studio movie starring a woman.” Unfortunately, that number will only increase—to 84 days—until Sandra Bullock and…
