Todd Anthony

"I coulda been a contender," Marlon Brando laments to Rod Steiger in On the Waterfront. Instead, he got "a one-way ticket to Palookaville." Russ, Jerry, and Sid, the three unemployed Jersey City guys at the core of the droll, poignant new film Palookaville, share Brando's ultimate destination. Like the ex-pugilist,...

Mother Night, a loving adaption of Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 novel of the same name, should be required viewing as a companion piece to Casablanca. Like that Bogart classic, Mother Night has a powerful World War II love story at its core, and uses that tragic romance to address the tricky...

The made-on-a-shoestring male bonding comedy Swingers has become a darling of the film festival circuit thanks to the cinematic equivalent of good cocktail chatter: smart, funny lines delivered by a handful of stylish, good-looking (but not overpoweringly so) young hipsters whose slick, trendy appearances mask vulnerable hearts. Jon Favreau, the...

I hate the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. I know, I know -- film festivals are good for us, they give us a chance to see movies that we wouldn't otherwise get to see, they bring area cinephiles together, et cetera. But after screening videos of FLIFF (not to be...

Let me give you a piece of advice regarding the movie Sleepers: As you settle into your seat for the opening credits and the phrase "based on a true story" appears, ignore it. Watch this movie as if it were a work of pure fiction. The best-selling book of the...