Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2004 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Focking Wonderful

  published December 30, 2004

  When your movie gets riotous laughter out of endless utterances of the word "Focker," it doesn't have to try very hard. So it's no surprise that... More >>

• Fahrenheit 2004

  published December 23, 2004

  The Moore the Merrier One film looms over all others in 2004: Fahrenheit 9/11, released in the heat of summer and the... More >>

• Docs that Rock

  published December 23, 2004

  Concert films, save for a handful of exceptions, are a bore -- the equivalent of a wish-you-were-here postcard that taunts you with glimpses of... More >>

• Sea of Loathe

  published December 23, 2004

  The critic who takes notes during The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou will ultimately fill a notepad only with scribbled details:... More >>

• Skip It

  published November 25, 2004

  s the year stumbles toward its conclusion and critics begin penning their best-and-worst compendiums, here's a holiday contender fit for the... More >>

• The Edge of Treason

  published November 18, 2004

  A week after having seen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, no memory of it remains save some scribblings in my notepad, such is the... More >>

• Messed Around

  published November 4, 2004

  Ray, director Taylor Hackford's fifteen-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959's "What'd... More >>

• Icky, Icky, Icky

  published November 4, 2004

  Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He's talking about... More >>

• Say What? Say Why?

  published October 7, 2004

  Maybe it's the mark of a great film that it can affect an audience member even when he sleeps through the entire thing. Such was the case with my... More >>

• Floundering

  published September 30, 2004

  Shark Tale is an animated film, though after you see it you might wonder whether the term is intended as oxymoronic. Put simply, it... More >>

• Head Trip

  published July 29, 2004

  Perhaps the most unlikely thing to capture on film is the creative process -- the spinning of gears, the tripping of wires, the breaking of... More >>

• Anatomy of a Buzz

  published July 22, 2004

  "You let me know when we've made it," says drummer Josh Garza, a passenger in a van headed for Cleveland, where his band Secret Machines will... More >>

• Run, Do Not Crawl

  published July 1, 2004

  All you need to know about Spider-Man 2 is revealed in the opening credits, in which comic-book artist Alex Ross recaps the 2002... More >>

• Kiickasssss!

  published June 24, 2004

  The real Melvin Van Peebles shows up just once in Baadasssss!, a fictionalized account of his making of Sweet Sweetback's... More >>

• Feels Like 80 Days

  published June 17, 2004

  You might think that with the technological advances in moviemaking since 1956, this new version of Around the World in 80 Days... More >>

• Straight to Helen

  published May 27, 2004

  Sitting through Raising Helen is an exercise in frustration, because somewhere inside this big heap of Hollywood nothing is a... More >>

• Bar Code

  published April 29, 2004

  Laws of Attraction is the kind of film you might mistake for "cute" or "charming" at first glance. Maybe you will open the paper and... More >>

• Big Deal

  published April 22, 2004

  I am going to give 13 Going on 30 too much credit, though it is hardly worth the effort; Lord knows the filmmakers didn't put much... More >>

• On the Flip Side

  published April 15, 2004

  The six-month intermission is over; those of you left in the lobby, wondering if Uma Thurman ever did kill Bill, may now return to your seats and... More >>

• Punish This

  published April 15, 2004

  Here's a subject with which no one should ever have to grapple: Is this new version of The Punisher, starring Thomas Jane as the... More >>

• Southern Comfort

  published March 25, 2004

  The Ladykillers is the second film in as many years made by Joel and Ethan Coen to fill space between pet projects that seem... More >>

• Papa Tried

  published March 25, 2004

  Jersey Girl, the sixth film by writer-director Kevin Smith, is the least Kevin Smith-y film he's ever made, which will be welcome... More >>

• Hutch Ado About Nothing

  published March 11, 2004

  Maybe the most amazing thing about the big-screen version of Starsky & Hutch is how much smaller it feels than its predecessor, the... More >>

• Suffer Unto Mel

  published February 26, 2004

  This Jew has spent several hours in the past week reading all four Gospels, as well as various supplementary (and often inflammatory) texts, upon... More >>