"Life Itself," Steve James's acclaimed documentary about the life and legacy of iconic film critic Roger Ebert, has received its first major nomination of the 2014 awards season. The film has been nominated by the Gotham Independent Film Awards in...
I went into “The Babadook” under a kind of misapprehension.
I’d heard a bit about the movie—it would have been difficult, as a working film
reviewer to not have—but not orally, so I thought that the title was...
David Alvarado and Jason Sussberg’s documentary “The
Immortalists” concerns the scientific effort to defeat the aging process, yet
because it focuses so closely on the personalities of two scientists in
particular, it is bound to...
For “The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness,” director Mami
Sunada was allowed remarkable access to one of the most important artistic
enterprises of the last half-century, Studio Ghibli, at a very unique point in
its existence. News about...
How odd that “The Imitation
Game,” one of the more rousingly entertaining crowd-pleasers coming
out this holiday season—as endorsed by its People’s Choice Award at
the Toronto film festival—also happens to be one of...
Jessica Lange was waitressing in
New York when asked whether she'd like to audition for a role in "King
Kong." "What the…?," she thought, and so flew out to Los
Angeles, a place she'd never been. Producer Dino De Laurentis took one look...
The idea
of a movie that could be properly described as an existential western is so
inherently absurd that it sounds like the set-up to some kind of arcane joke
with the phrase "Go West, Jung Man!" in the punchline. After all,
there are certain...
The scene-stealing penguins from the “Madagascar” franchise
get their own movie in the appropriately titled “Penguins of Madagascar.”
One would think a little of these crazy creatures would go a
long way. And indeed, this...
The law of diminishing returns, which has afflicted so many
comedy sequels over the years, strikes again in “Horrible Bosses 2,” further
proving that just telling the same joke with a dirtier punchline isn’t quite as
funny as...
Sheila writes: Recently, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Patti Smith sat down and interviewed director David Lynch for the BBC. The result is a fascinating and atypical interview, revealing and evocative, giving the sense of two people sharing an...