As stripped-down and propulsive as its robotic title, Drive is the most “American” movie yet by Danish genre director Nicolas Winding Refn. The film, for which Refn was named best director last May in Cannes, is a sleek, tense piece of work that, as a vehicle for Ryan Gosling, has…
What I don’t know: why these movies keep getting made. I Don’t Know How She Does It is based on Allison Pearson’s 2002 diaristic comic bestseller and directed by Douglas McGrath. But its real auteur is screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna, scripter of wan workplace romantic comedies such as the limp…
I recently sat down with director Nicolas Winding Refn to talk about his new film Drive, starring Ryan Gosling as Hollywood stunt driver by day and a getaway driver by night. Refn is one of those filmmakers that, if you’re a cinephile, you’ve likely heard of by now, with such…
In honor of Warrior (out in theaters this past weekend — so go see it … no, seriously, it’s really good), lets take a look back at some of the most epic male sibling rivalries in film history. After the jump, it’s brother against brother. And brother against brother against…
The cool thing about Kevin Bacon is that he doesn’t really seem like a movie star. He seems like, you know, a guy. The kind of guy it would be fun to hang out and shoot the shit with. He’s good looking, but not George Clooney good looking. He’s been…
Currently the fifth-to-last film on Steven Soderbergh’s ever-expanding pre-retirement slate, Contagion opens on day two of a global viral epidemic. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Beth Emhoff, an American employee for an ominously unspecific multinational corporation who returns from a business trip in Hong Kong to her wintry Midwestern home feeling like…
At one point in Higher Ground, Vera Farmiga’s decade-spanning directorial debut, the actress, playing Corinne, a woman still soaked with lake water after her baptism into an evangelical sect, resembles no less a touchstone than Ronee Blakley in Robert Altman’s Nashville: slightly high hair; starchy, sexless, long tunic dress; swaying…
Back in 1963, Andy Warhol pointed a small movie camera at his friend John Giorno, recorded him sleeping for six hours and released it as a six-hour film called Sleep. Warhol shot eight hours of the top of the Empire State Building and called it Empire. He filmed close-ups of…
We’re watching Bravo’s Most Eligible Dallas every week so you don’t have to. The fourth episode finds formerly minor characters becoming thunder thieves. Read on. Scene 1: Courtney and Tara meet for lunch at Toulouse. After a brief table-etiquette lesson from Court (FORK is on LEFT because both words have…
A group of thirtysomethings trapped in the amber of their high school years attempt to bone their way into adulthood in A Good Old Fashioned Orgy, an ensemble sex comedy written and directed by Larry Sanders Show writers Alex Gregory and Peter Huyck. Technically the orgy of the title is…
Ah, the season is upon us. Wait, what season, you ask? Halloween of course! If you’ve taken a gander at the date today, then you probably noticed that we are now exactly two months away from All Hallow’s Eve. Some of you may be the type who rush to your…
We’re watching Bravo’s Most Eligible Dallas every week so you don’t have to. The third episode finds Courtney in nice-making, flirty-flirty mode. New sensations! On with the show … Scene 1: Before we join Courtney’s morning hangover drama in progress, it’s important to note Bravo’s method of establishing setting. In…
A mysterious video sped onto the Internets over over the weekend, leaving nothing but flame trails and questions about its origins soon after it went viral. The video’s title: El DeLorean de Volver al Futuro en Cabildo y Juramento, which roughly translates to “This is heavy duty, Doc.” Seeing as…
Renaissance man Steve Martin will take the stage at the Meyerson Symphony Center tonight, but he won’t just be wielding a microphone. The funny man also happens to be an author, playwright, songwriter and Grammy-award winning banjo player, who has not one but two #1 bluegrass albums (The Crow and…
In Jesse Peretz’s Our Idiot Brother, Paul Rudd plays Ned, a kind of Upstate New York version of “The Dude” Lebowski — a man out of time, blinkered enough to be living the hippie dream. In the film’s first scene, Ned is “entrapped” into selling pot at a farmers’ market…
Join me in obsessing about British actor, comedian, writer, commentator and all-around adorable young curmudgeon David Mitchell. He’s worth obsessing over, if you’re in need of a new source of laughs, because he’s as funny as Ricky Gervais. Maybe funnier. And he’s all over YouTube, thanks to the BBC channel…
We’re watching Bravo’s Most Eligible Dallas every week so you don’t have to. For introductions to the cast members, check out last week’s recap of the premiere. There’s a lot to rehash, so on with the show! Scene 1: Decked out in his finest athletic sweater, Matt stops by his…
Maybe the real question should be: Why haven’t more reality show participants killed themselves? With this week’s apparent suicide by hanging of Russell Armstrong, the 47-year-old estranged spouse of one of Bravo’s Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, the death toll from reality TV increases by one. There have been other…
With this week bringing the release of not one but two ’80s remakes — the bloody double bill of Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night — the proverbial final nail will be driven into the coffin as we lay yet another cinematic summer** season to rest. But was it so…
A cinematic reboot for the patron saint of 98-pound weaklings, Conan the Barbarian is both truer to the vision of its character’s creator, Robert E. Howard, and more satisfyingly pulpy than John Milius’ 1982 movie incarnation. Director Marcus Nispel, along with no fewer than three screenwriters, eschews the lugubrious mythmaking…
Directed by Danish filmmaker Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by David Nicholls, based on his novel, One Day stars Anne Hathaway as Emma, a too-serious would-be writer in Coke-bottle glasses and combat boots. She’s nursing a crush on Dexter (Jim Sturgess), her too-good-looking rich-boy college classmate. She’s earnest, tenacious and…
With last night’s premiere of Most Eligible Dallas, a new group of campers arrived at the Bravo-lebrity summer camp. In addition to shining a sometimes unforgiving light on our fair city, the show introduces a possible new franchise. Bravo’s brand-making fixation on the seemingly wealthy (Real Housewives) and the people…
