Arts & Culture

Actor, writer and director Crispin Glover owns an interesting piece of real estate in between the realms of independent cinema and pop culture. The lanky legend has pulled off brilliant performances in memorable, mainstream movies such as the one-armed bellhop in Hot Tub Time Machine, the conniving “Thin Man” in…

It’s a little sad that Colin Farrell has outgrown roles that require him to wear raggedy sweaters and say things like “For fook’s sake!” It had to happen, though. Farrell has always made a terrific bad boy, but he clearly knows he couldn’t be a scamp forever, and he seems…

Denton is a sneaky little son-of-a-bitch. They went off and planned and executed an international film festival with barely a peep. The line-up is beyond impressive and each day of Thin Line Film and Music fest is filled with shorts, features and local bands like Slobberbone and The O’s. Yeah,…

It’s a little sad that Colin Farrell has outgrown roles that require him to wear raggedy sweaters and say things like “For fook’s sake!” It had to happen, though. Farrell has always made a terrific bad boy, but he clearly knows he couldn’t be a scamp forever, and he seems…

Congratulations, Detroit. In 1987, Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop cemented it as the most violent city in the world, an honor the Motor City resented for decades until its powers that be realized they may as well erect a statue of Peter Weller and milk the tourism. Twenty-seven years later, the attention…

Director José Padilha’s long-delayed RoboCop reboot has arrived, and it’s neither an unalloyed (see what I did there?) triumph nor the travesty that partisans of Paul Verhoeven’s subversive Reagan-era classic had feared. At least, and at most, it’s different, taking bold liberties with the original text, as remakes should. One…

Though it’s difficult to pinpoint the typical Berlin Film Festival film, I’ve attended the festival enough times to attest that most pictures in the competition lean toward the somber end of the scale: You’re more likely to see a drama about immigrants in tough circumstances or children left to fend…

The endless love in question unfolds in that universe where shy, bookish teenage girls are always catalog-model beautiful, not a pimple in sight or a pound overweight, not a garment from Hot Topic darkening their closets. The movie tells us that 17-year-old Jade Butterfield (Gabriella Wilde) is “awkward” and has…

Almost a pop history of Western culture’s relationship to female orgasm, Charlie Stratton’s In Secret is a spirited zip through Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, a sex-and-sin morality tale of the sort that has been the template for the last decade of Woody Allen dramas. Unlike those, In Secret boasts vigor and…

Just as animated characters who look too human creep us out, could there be a phenomenon we might call the RomCom Uncanny Valley, a case when movie stars’ gorgeousness fully outshines our ability to believe their characters’ humdrum relationship problems? Radiant lovers make radiant love — and then argue about…

Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, both of which publish special daily issues at the major international festivals, may be the most famous movie trade magazines. But every morning at any of these festivals, including Berlin, most critics I know – and probably plenty of industry people, too – turn to…