Email Author Alan Scherstuhl

Awards

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published November 13, 2008

  "What's At Stake"

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published April 3, 2008

  "The Best Story of the Year"

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published April 24, 2008

  "Desert Storm"

• 2009 - Kansas City Press Club Heart of America Awards, published September 11, 2008

  "Water Logged"

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2013 Stories by Alan Scherstuhl

• Black Rock's babes-in-the-woods horror is as unsettling as it is exciting

  published May 16, 2013

  Seemingly crafted to validate the fears of those conservatives who rage that the white man can't get respect on the big screen these days, the... More >>

• How to define a movie critic's job in the summer of comic books

  published May 2, 2013

  To: Stephanie Zacharek From: Alan Scherstuhl Hi, Stephanie, welcome again to the Voice! More >>

• Tom Cruise's alien Oblivion invokes an inhuman majesty

  published April 18, 2013

  The good news: Here's a lavish, serious science-fiction picture, one that on occasion transcends big-budget hitmaking convention to glance... More >>

• Now out on DVD, Django is still kicking up shit

  published April 18, 2013

  Half a year later, now on Blu-ray and DVD, Django Unchained is still kicking up shit, this time via cross-media trickle-down.... More >>

• The Sundance Channel's Rectify is often excellent TV

  published April 18, 2013

  At any prior point in TV history, Rectify, a six-part... More >>

• 42's Jackie Robinson story is no baseball diamond in the rough

  published April 11, 2013

  A likable hagiography as nuanced as a plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame, Brian Helgeland's Jackie Robinson bio 42 finds a... More >>

• Thanks to a new dimension, Jurassic Park 3D is scarier than ever

  published April 4, 2013

  They do move in herds," Sam Neill marvels, purportedly gazing at his director's miracle dinosaurs but in reality directing his... More >>

• Only you can decide if the strange, sweet Wrong is right for you

  published March 28, 2013

  If real life were like Wrong, Quentin Dupieux's sweetly unnerving experiment in ambient fucked-uppedness, your phone would ring... More >>

• Detour is terrifyingly claustrophobic...in a good way

  published March 28, 2013

  Again and again, movies show you killing, but it's one in a thousand on-screen killings that might get you to feel something of what killing is... More >>

• Bruce Willis needs G.I. Joe more than it needs him

  published March 28, 2013

  What must Bruce Willis have felt when he discovered that his seven or so minutes of G.I. Joe: Retaliation screen time offer much... More >>

• The truth (maybe) behind The Shining

  published March 21, 2013

  Like the blood that gushes forth from the elevators of the Overlook Hotel, brilliant/ridiculous theories of what Stanley Kubrick's The... More >>

• The Incredible Burt Wonderstone has charm but no comedy magic

  published March 14, 2013

  Steve Carell's gift is for men who might drown in their own obliviousness. Like his Daily Show reporter, or The Office's Michael... More >>

• In Top of the Lake, Peggy Olson goes to hell

  published March 14, 2013

  Elisabeth Moss's face is far from the only reason to savor Top of the Lake, Jane Campion’s smart, bracing, hugely enjoyable... More >>

• Oz the Great and Powerful tilts toward the mawkish

  published March 7, 2013

  It's a bad omen when, early on in Oz the Great and Powerful, we learn that the full given name of its wizard is Oscar — also the... More >>

• 

  Other Ozzes great and (mostly) terrible

  published March 7, 2013

  Twenty minutes into the first full-length movie based on L. Frank Baum's most beloved novel, a duck pukes into the face of Larry Semon, the... More >>

• West of Memphis is more a work of advocacy than of journalism

  published February 28, 2013

  The murder of the children should be the most disturbing thing. But for many viewers, that isn't the case in the four films chronicling the... More >>

• 

  Happy People showcases the small, happy world of a Siberian trapper

  published February 21, 2013

  In the spare yet grand Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, co-director and tour guide Werner Herzog talks us through one season... More >>

• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

  published February 21, 2013

  In the spare yet grand Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, co-director and tour guide Werner Herzog talks us through one season cycle in the... More >>

• The magical Beautiful Creatures is under the spell of abstinence

  published February 14, 2013

  Here's a question you can spit back next time someone complains that our popular culture is top-to-bottom depraved: "Then why are our... More >>

• The confused, shaggy Identity Thief is a comedic shambles

  published February 7, 2013

  Just a week or so after the Pentagon reversed its ban on allowing female soldiers into combat, here's another breakthrough, of a sort: The... More >>

• Knife Fight's political comedy would be sharper if it stayed on message

  published January 31, 2013

  From its first moments, the wish-fulfillment political-campaign comedy Knife Fight serves as an accidental demonstration of the... More >>

• The old-timer gangsters in Stand Up Guys are all "that guy"

  published January 31, 2013

  Please, for his own good, somebody clap Dustin Hoffman into a chastity belt. Based on what Al Pacino suffers in Stand Up Guys and... More >>

• Tchoupitoulas explores the marvels of New Orleans in one night out

  published January 10, 2013

  Although they almost certainly have plans for striking new projects that expand our understanding of what documentaries can be, Bill and Turner... More >>

• Tchoupitoulas

  published January 10, 2013

  Although they almost certainly have plans for striking new projects that expand our understanding of what documentaries can be, Bill and Turner... More >>