If a toddler tried to re-create the mystifying behavior of adults, it would look a lot like Paul Haggis’ Third Person, a drama in which grown-ups scream and cry and kiss for reasons that are confounding even to those who understand speech. The film follows a handful of couples, or…
Earth to Echo is a slender kiddie flick about a quartet of preteens and their palm-sized alien pal that’s at once bland, well-intentioned and utterly terrifying about the mental development of modern children. As in the most honest kids films, our 5-foot heroes admit to being isolated, unhappy and cowed…
It’s kind of happy-sad, like watching a kid you knew as a toddler graduate from high school: Chris Evans, seemingly destined to be a boy forever, is now officially a grown-up. In Bong Joon-ho’s futuristic snowbummer Snowpiercer, the Korean director’s first English-language film, Evans plays the leader of a group…
To call Roger Ebert one of the great populist film critics is to damn him with faint praise. Though he took pride in working for the scrappier of the two Chicago dailies, the Sun-Times, and though we do have him to thank — or curse —f or popularizing the thumbs-up/thumbs-down…
It’s a relief, after the wretched Identity Thief, to see movies whose makers love Melissa McCarthy as much as audiences do. Identity Thief’s comic centerpiece was predicated on the idea that McCarthy having sex is a hilarious gross-out, like she’s the pie Jason Biggs once had to diddle. Half an…
Horror, like porno, can be judged only by its effect on your pulse. If you jerked in your seat, it served its function. Biology requires us to react to jump scares, just it urges a lonely man to thrill to a great set of tits. But triggering a coronary reaction…
Mark Ruffalo’s great gift, besides those scruffy good looks and that prickish, hungover charisma, is capturing the essence of the guy who’s spinning toward a crash but trying to angle himself back. His greatest performance, in Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me, one of the best films of the…
Here are some of the triumphant moments of recent history that make it into the climactic montage in America, the latest “America’s perfect!”/”America’s doomed!” pant load from felonious troll Dinesh D’Souza: Jackie Robinson rounding home. Elvis Presley swinging his hips. Ronald Reagan and the Berlin Wall. Boxed copies of Windows…
If you’re looking for an evening filled with Igloo coolers, Toby Keith t-shirts, and more potassium nitrate than you ever thought humanly possible, then you need to get your cutoffs to Kaboomtown in Addison on July 3rd for their annual fireworks bonanza-extravaganza. The Wall Street Journal named it one of…
Even though many would consider soccer a form of art, it’s not often enough that sports and fine art come together in meaningful ways. But Texas-born soccer star Brek Shea is also an artist and he’s bringing his two loves under the same roof at 6 p.m. Thursday for an…
There’s something aggressively patriotic about fireworks over Fair Park. Maybe it’s the stunning art deco architecture or the childhood memories of the State Fair, but seeing sparklers crackle in the night sky while Lee Greenwood plays over the loud speakers brings an American tear to my eye every red, white,…
So few days each year are designated for real family time that it would be a waste to spend Independence Day on your dang smartphone. You’ve gotta park that phone, stop looking at photos crazy friend posted of herself drinking a placenta smoothie and admit that technology probably ruins everything…
Science fiction has often been dismissed by cultural watchdogs as anodyne, low-brow trash deserving of its exile to cheap paperbacks and B-movies. Aided by this perception radical artists have long recognized the genre’s potential as a medium for propaganda and veiled social commentary. Case in point — extraterrestrials in sci-fi…
Calling Paul Varghese Dallas’ first breakout comedy star really isn’t giving him enough credit. Dallas wouldn’t have a modern comedy scene to go to without him. He’s not only become one of the city’s most recognizable faces but he’s become a national touring comic who has opened for some of…
Human beings can make the strangest noises. That little vocal box in your throat can imitate everything from animals to other people. Like the rest of the animal kingdom, we use noise to communicate or entertain. And if your name is Michael Winslow, noise is your personal brand of comedy…
Horror movies have an odd appeal. Most of them are an outlet that tap into our subconscious inferiority complexes and gives it a chance to yell at a group of human beings who truly have it worse than we ever will, “Man, it sucks to be them.” Those of us…
Classical music may seem snooty but there are even music snobs exist amongst the snobbiest sound form of music. Beethoven is to classical music what the Beatles are to indie music fans. Hell, Jack Black even made fun of the Belgian born composer as an easy choice on one of…
Why simply stroll from your office to your car when you can propel yourself through the air, using the buildings and bus stop benches around you as concrete trampolines? My Playground is a film that might inspire you to do just that, or, at the very least, to look at…
If you were looking for Matthew Posey when he lived in Los Angeles, you’d need look no further than the local watering hole. Every night, he’d sit around with “a bunch of drunks making their own religion.” Those experiences, drinking with the likes of Amanda Plummer or Jeff Goldblum, were…
Hankering to get out of Dallas, but bound to this slice of sunbaked, heat-stroked geography for the foreseeable future? It can seem dire; days on end of feeling trapped in an air-conditioned space will wear on you, even if you are grateful for the cold air. But this city has…
There are very few bugs that don’t deserve squashing. Flies deserve a swift, crunchy end to their lives, as do beetles. And no one likes a slug. But everyone loves butterflies. What’s not to love? The ugly ducklings of bugs transform from slinky caterpillars to gorgeous, friendly butterflies, which provide…
Most of America is satisfied with a few beers, a semi-burnt burger, and some sparklers on the Fourth of July. But for those of you looking for an adventure, we have a few ideas for you. After all, our founding fathers were known for being rebels. They held their meetings…
