Over the course of its first sixty minutes, Ken Loach’s The Angels’ Share proves a testament to its director’s enduring reputation as a master of British cinema and the social-realist form, articulating the frustrations of Glasgow’s working class with clarity and sophistication. Robbie (non-actor Paul Brannigan) is a brash ne’er-do-well…
Where has Robert Downey Jr. gone? There’s no doubt he’s the star of Iron Man 3; he sprints through the picture like a neurotic panther. And yet he’s absent, detached in a Zen-like way from the whole affair. The nakedness that defines his best performances — in any role, up…
End of days or the beginning of new ways of seeing? Fittingly, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel’s Leviathan, an all-senses-consuming chronicle of a fishing trawler, takes its title from the sea beast described in the Book of Job, lines from which constitute the film’s epigraph: “He makes the depths churn…
To: Stephanie Zacharek From: Alan Scherstuhl Hi, Stephanie, welcome again to the Voice! Like you, I found myself worn out by Iron Man 3, especially the long, kabooming climax. And, like you, I found myself wishing that Robert Downey Jr. had something deeper to play, and that the character had…
Before the original Alien clinched stardom for director Ridley Scott, back when Blade Runner was just a twinkle in Scott’s imaginative eye, there was his first film, The Duellists, a Napoleonic-era yarn based on a slip of a real incident that was later embellished into a short story by Joseph…
Georgia O’Keeffe. Georgia O’Keeffe has been done to death — on greeting cards, calendars and posters. That’s why it’s easy to forget that in the first half of the twentieth century, she was one of America’s most significant early modernists. And with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, she crusaded for the…
An ostensibly feel-good French-Canadian comedy about artificial insemination gone awry, Ken Scott’s Starbuck mainly makes you feel like taking a shower. The protagonist is a hapless forty-year-old Montreal bachelor named David (Patrick Huard, resembling a younger, hunkier Daniel Auteuil, without the wild-eyed intensity), whose life is turned upside down when…
The meek shall inherit the Earth,” somebody said once — probably Truffaut. Two pictures into his thrilling career, writer-director Antonio Campos seems determined to show us that that might not be anything to celebrate. Campos’s feature debut, 2008’s Afterschool, was essentially one part Blow Up to three parts Rushmore-as-psychological-horror-flick. While…
Daniel Lugo (Mark Wahlberg) believes life has cheated him. Doesn’t America promise riches and luxury to people who deserve it? He’s worked hard to build his body into a hulking knot of muscles; success should follow. But Lugo — the lead in Pain & Gain, Michael Bay’s neon-noir ode to…
Though he’s long been among the most recognizable celebrities in the world, Tom Cruise has always seemed vaguely irritating, like the popular kid at school everybody secretly dislikes. His is an odd sort of fame: Globally recognized but rarely acclaimed, he remains more reliably bankable than nearly any other actor…
Just as Mad Men charms its viewers by using sex, drugs, snappy banter and pretty people to make heavy topics (sexism, racism, dreams diffused) palatable, the editors of Mad Men, Mad World trust that some TV glamour will get readers interested in digesting academic theories. It’s not wrong. Full of…
When Michael Haneke’s sobering end-of-life drama Amour premiered at Cannes last May, many critics reflected on the presence of a shared cultural legacy. Its stars, Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, evoked the iconography of the New Wave, the once-young faces of Hiroshima mon amour and My Night at Maud’s now…
In The Client List, Lifetime’s pseudo-steamy take on the world of sensual massage, Jennifer Love Hewitt plays a struggling housewife who takes a rubdown side job in order to support her kids after her husband disappears. The show, which jumps from scenes of Hewitt pleasuring executives to her dancing with…
This is the second installment in Susan Froyd’s weekly Repertory Cinema Wishlist. To be fair, you can’t really pick just one Robert Altman movie; the iconoclastic director’s prolific career — with its roller coaster of highs and lows, big and little movies, theater adapted to film, and sprawling collections of…
Don’t worry, there (probably) won’t be any post-apocalyptic zombies at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema this Sunday. Probably. But when it comes to that day’s ten-hour long marathon of action flicks from director Michael Bay — the appropriately titled “Baymageddon” — there are no guarantees. Continue reading for details on the…
Stoners the world ’round will celebrate the highest of all holidays this Saturday — 4/20, in case you got so baked you’d forgotten — and the high-minded here in Colorado are in for a special treat. Not only is the stuff legal here, but we’re blessed with cultural institutions that…
In the rush to lead the pack, writer-director Ryan Perez, a UCLA grad and veteran of the Upright Citizens Brigade comedy theater, and who has been an in-house writer and director for Funny or Die since June 2008, had to cut corners. Perez wrote the script in 72 hours, bought…
Thanks to her otherworldly cuteness, wide-eyed “perma-kitten” Lil Bub is the Internet’s favorite celebri-kitty. Her bright-green eyes sparkle with perpetual wonder, and her little pink tongue sticks out beneath an upper lip that’s always smiling. She’s also polydactyl — meaning she has thumbs. When her human, Mike Bridavsky, needs cheering…
After working a packed auditorium into a frenzy at last September’s premiere of Lords of Salem at the Toronto International Film Festival, Rob Zombie anxiously took his seat and watched his audience watch his film, his first independently financed feature. It’s also the first film he’s made following a messy…
Picking up a mere seven years after the previous installment, Scary Movie V features no original cast members, no Wayans brothers producing (they bailed after No. 3) and a new director (first-timer Malcolm D. Lee). It’s still terrible. Why, you may ask, does one even bother to review Scary Movie…
Georgia O’Keeffe. Georgia O’Keeffe has been done to death — on greeting cards, calendars and posters. That’s why it’s easy to forget that in the first half of the twentieth century, she was one of America’s most significant early modernists. And with her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, she crusaded for the…
A big winner at last year’s SXSW, Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot, about a couple of graffiti bombers aiming to gain fame by tagging the Mets’ Home Run Apple, runs on nothing but biodiesel personality. Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington) are mates only in spraying, and they work…
