The Hateful Eight Refuses to Play Nice

Here’s to Quentin Tarantino’s cussed perversity. The Hateful Eight, his intimate suspenseful Western splatter-horror comedy, has been shot at great expense in the long-gone 70mm format, but the movie itself is set almost entirely in cramped interiors. He’s hired Ennio Morricone to score the thing, but don’t expect rousing new…

The Revenant Dares to Strand Us in the Cold

What’s been missing for years in Hollywood’s adventure films? Verisimilitude. Correspondent with the rise of the computers, and the ability to show us any place that filmmakers can imagine, has been the fall of immersiveness — that sense that the actors are in a place you can’t go yourself rather…

You Already Know Everything that Happens in Daddy’s Home

Here’s a challenge. Gather some friends, pour some drinks and announce to everyone the premise of Daddy’s Home, the new family comedy about dads competing to be pater superior. It won’t take long: Will Ferrell is a doting schlemiel of a stepdad to suburban moppets whose biological father, played by…

Jennifer Lawrence Hustles, but Joy Does Her No Favors

In most of his eight films and especially since The Fighter (2010), choreographer of chaos and screwball scion David O. Russell has assembled boisterous, buoyant casts. His manic ensemble players, like those in Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle, carom off one another, their high-pitched energy keeping the movies bustling…

Concussion Takes on the NFL but Offers Little Drama

Concussion isn’t much of a movie, but it’s a fascinating bellwether for where the National Football League currently stands on chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative brain disease associated with many of its former players. As it happens, the brain isn’t supposed to whip against the skull like humans are…

The Big Short Takes On the ’08 Crash — and Crashes

Fueled by impotent, blustery outrage, Adam McKay’s The Big Short, about the grotesque banking and investing practices that led to the 2008 financial collapse, is about as fun and enlightening as a cranked-up portfolio manager’s rue-filled comedown after an energy-shot bender. Based on Michael Lewis’ 2010 bestselling book of the…

Cold and Dreamy, Carol Examines Women in Love

Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin’s sweet nectarine of a jazz standard “Easy Living” figures, in a glancing yet potent way, in Todd Haynes’ Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt. Even though the lyrics speak of contentment — “Living for you is easy living/It’s easy to…

Amy Nicholson’s Top 10 Films of 2015

How good was 2015 for movies? My first draft of a top 10 was a staggering top 30. I had to make some agonizing cuts and punt by giving documentaries their own sidebar — this year, they’ve earned it. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: Watch every one…

Relax — The Force Awakens Is the Third Good Star Wars Movie

George Lucas is the L. Ron Hubbard of Hollywood. Both men were sci-fi dreamers turned mega-millionaires who spun their pulp adventures into a religion. Tap the power within yourself, they urged. The faithful forked over their dollars. Then both Lucas and Hubbard mucked up their simple premise with add-ons like…

The Best Movies of 2015

No sentence distills the essence of one strain of cinephilia — mine especially — better than this one: “Motion pictures are for people who like to watch women.” Bracing in its profound simplicity, this line was written in 1983 by Boyd McDonald (1925-1993), author of the essential collection Cruising the…

Quentin Tarantino Isn’t Telling You What to Think

 Here’s a true story about a St. Louis murder that changed America. In 1837, a black freeman named Francis McIntosh stepped off a Mississippi riverboat and blundered into two white cops chasing a drunk sailor who’d called them names. They ordered McIntosh to stop the perp; when he refused, they…

The 10 Best TV Shows of 2015

This year turned out to be a challenging one for couch potatoes. In 2015, the “more programming, more problems” state of television held just as true for viewers as it did for network executives; there was simply too much to watch. But this year of Peak TV has delivered some…

10 Movies to See in 2016

As we approach the end of another year in moviegoing — and as the industry prepares for its annual spasm of awards and accolades — it seems an apt time to look ahead. Here are 10 films you won’t want to miss in 2016. 1. The Invitation (Dir. Karyn Kusama)…

Amy Poehler and Tina Fey Bring the Party in Sisters

What’s quietly revolutionary about Sisters is that it’s a dumb party movie like a million others. The hosts score booze, invite over dozens of friends and frenemies and then watch in horror — and a touch of self-congratulatory awe — as their house gets trashed. With the sunrise come lessons,…

How Star Wars-Style Fantasy Violence Conquered Our Culture

A while back, a friend expressed concern that her son, a 10-year-old, was watching too much My Little Pony. “It’s sweet,” she said, “but not what I’d choose.” I asked what she would prefer that he watch. “Well, his dad started him on that new Star Wars cartoon.” That cartoon…

Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Deems Spotlight Best Film of 2015

This morning the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association (DFWFCA) announced the winners of its 22nd annual film critics awards.  If you somehow missed this article’s headline: Thomas McCarthy’s based-on-a-true-story newsroom drama Spotlight won Best Picture, as well as a few other awards.  If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter…

A Survival Guide to Star Wars: Force Awakens in Dallas

So you’re alive and in Dallas during the release of Star Wars: Force Awakens. You know there’s no escaping the power. It’s everywhere: Star Wars is on your jewelry, in your food, on emblazoned on your buildings. It’s roving your house with gleeful boops and beeps. Many of you have…

Howard’s Flick Ain’t Dick, but It Ain’t Bad

Years after Moby-Dick was a flop, Herman Melville visited an old ship’s captain named George Pollard. Both men had seen better days. In their youth, both had sailed the seas with some success. Melville had written novels about his adventures with island girls, and Pollard had once helmed one of…