File this under “Positively Charming.” Texas Theatre shows Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Saturday night, and in proper Texas Theatre style they’ve filmed a mock doc promo teaser. From the miniature architectural model to the Candy Dungeon, it’s extremely satisfying. (Especially with The Midnight Coterie of Sinister…
A tale of love complicated — if not thwarted — by prior responsibilities, intractable barriers and the rigid high-society norms that frustrate its Victorian characters’ attempts to live as they so desperately want, The Invisible Woman finds Ralph Fiennes proving as adept behind the camera as he is in front…
Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi solidifies his status as one of cinema’s finest living dramatists with The Past, a superb follow-up to 2011’s Oscar-winning A Separation that again situates audiences amid interpersonal, familial and household crises. Working from a script that incisively plumbs a thicket of logistical and emotional complications, Farhadi’s…
If you’re a person alive in this age, Ralph Fiennes has at some point probably made you hate him. As the Nazi Amon Goeth in 1993’s Schindler’s List, Fiennes embodied one of history’s great evils, somehow making being utterly detestable compelling. In Martin McDonagh’s riotous, under-regarded In Bruges, Fiennes spat…
Russians still make the best movie villains. Since 9-11, Hollywood has been queasy about giving us fictional baddies from Arab countries — the line between cheap stereotypes and real-life religious extremism is too blurry, too delicate. South American drug lords have had their day, and Albanians in bad sweaters just…
“You are the man?” a crook asks Ice Cube as the cop comedy Ride Along opens. “I am the man!” Cube insists. You can’t blame him for being defensive. Now a 44-year-old father of five, Cube is three decades away from the furious teenager who co-founded N.W.A. his senior year…
Despite some reluctance, Wes Craven is a name-brand filmmaker. The phrase “Wes Craven Presents” comes with certain expectations thanks to the financial success of the Scream franchise and The Hills Have Eyes series before that. But what cemented Craven’s reputation is A Nightmare on Elm Street, a deathless cycle of…
In Devil’s Due, co-directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (V/H/S) and first-time screenwriter Lindsay Devlin offer an uninspired found-footage riff on Roman Polanski’s demon-spawn classic, Rosemary’s Baby (1968). On their Dominican Republic honeymoon, the squeakily innocent Samantha (Allison Miller) and Zach (Zach Gilford) are drugged by a cult who draw…
Tomorrow is the day this year’s Oscar nominations are revealed, also known as national Gah! What Were Those Idiot Voters Thinking Day. We can’t wait, so in the meantime, we give you this: 1. Marvel Films has become Taco Bell, with plenty of sour creamy, cheesy wrap-up menu items scheduled…
Don’t Talk – Siri from Alamo Drafthouse on Vimeo. The Alamo Drafthouse has a strange monopoly in the movie business on public service announcements that find new and creative ways to tell their patrons to shut off their phones. Their latest entry into their PSA vault is nothing short of…
Some big announcements came out of SXSW yesterday. Supernova heartthrob/astrophysicist/author/educator Neil deGrasse Tyson will participate in a keynote interview for Interactive on Saturday, March 8 at 2 p.m. So for the love of laminates, if you’ve ever known anyone in a power position at SXSW, now is the time to…
New Zealand stuntwoman-turned-actress Zoë Bell is fully aware of her unique position as an action star that also does her own stunts. After working as Lucy Lawless’s stunt double on Xena: Warrior Princess, Bell was discovered by Quentin Tarantino on the set of Kill Bill. After that, Bell has enjoyed…
In Spike Jonze’s new sci-fi romance, Her, Joaquin Phoenix plays a divorcee who rebounds by falling in love with his smartphone. On a recent Wednesday, however, he’s a delinquent boyfriend, leaving his iPad abandoned on a chair in a Lebanese restaurant as he bounces off to the parking lot for…
Here’s a movie that’ll flop in Kabul. Lone Survivor, the latest by Battleship director Peter Berg, is a jingoistic snuff film about a Navy SEAL squadron outgunned by the Taliban in the mountainous Kunar province. After four soldiers — played with muscles and machismo by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile…
The terrible reality of modern life is that even beautiful young people on a first date can’t go a whole evening without checking their phones. We need to be potentially connected to every possibility at all times; just allowing the present to happen has become increasingly foreign. That’s the idea…
Without big truth-telling scenes, grand, great-lady, Meryl Streep-type actors would be out of work. Hell, Meryl Streep would be out of work. But for now, at least, August: Osage County, John Wells’ film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit, keeps her out of the bread line. Streep plays…
Three types of artists hinge on authenticity: punk bands, folk singers, and rappers. Actors, like Oscar Isaac, are by definition phonies. But the star of Joel and Ethan Coen’s new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, gets that pressure to keep it real. In high school, he was a straight-edge punk frontman…
Here’s where I write about how hard it is to draw up a 10-best list at the end of the year. Except it isn’t: I think of drawing up a list as an honor and a necessity, a way of putting 12 months of moviegoing into some sort of perspective…
I could write a Shakespearean sonnet about each film on my Top 10 of 2013, but we know we’re all here for the agreements and arguments. (Plus, have you tried writing about Joe Swanberg in iambic pentameter?) Ladies and gentlemen, let’s begin. The Act of Killing — The year’s best…
January! Just the time to snuggle up with a 3D swordandpectoral extravaganza. And although some of its more imaginative plot details would make Edith Hamilton blanch, Renny Harlin’s Legend of Hercules fulfills every silly, flimsy promise that it makes in the first place: There are lots of battles (albeit rather…
James, By now, your buddies have forwarded you the Reddit Ask Me Anything where a 24-year-old man with Diphallia — aka two penises — says he wants to give you a facial. Say yes. Let’s get through the superficial reasons first. This magical male unicorn (er, twonicorn?) is anonymous, which…
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