Fictional movies that tackle topical subjects often have about them the fusty air of a civics lesson, as if we’re supposed to watch while pretending we’re not being led down the path of righteousness. But writer-director Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill is something else; it’s immediate and vital, and it doesn’t…
CANNES, France — “Je m’appelle Max.” Now that’s an opening line, so much better in French, and it’s just one reason I’m glad I waited to see Mad Max: Fury Road here in Cannes on the morning of the festival’s second day, Thursday, rather than at home in the States…
When suited, sunglassed, cigarette-smoking Don Draper says so long to TV land this weekend, many a fan will feel the loss. Sure, Mad Men romanticized and oversexed ’50s and ’60s America, but it did so with style. From Joan’s ferocious curves to Pete’s sneaky maneuvers, the motley crue of ad…
Some people complain about sequels to beloved movies, while others welcome the possibility that a part deux might be even better than the first. Sometimes that happens: While The Godfather is great, The Godfather: Part II expands on its dramatic intensity without repeating any of the same tricks, and The Empire Strikes Back is a much more operatic and emotionally complex picture than Star Wars.
You might want to protest that a sparkling new print of Grey Gardens violates the point of Grey Gardens. But if you feel strongly about it — or if you’ve never had the chance to witness the Fall of the House of Beale on a big screen — there’s no…
Diane Keaton thinks her new film is delightfully ironic. Richard Loncraine’s 5 Flights Up is the latest in that burgeoning genre, Retiree Real Estate Romantic Comedy, where cool, gray-haired New Yorkers realize they can barely afford to live in the city where they fell in love.
This doesn’t feel like a film that exists. How is George Miller’s bonkers, exhausting, no-future smash-’em-up Mad Max: Fury Road not one of those almost-was boondoggles mourned and dreamed of by fans, a revered director’s impossible vision that, thanks to the unstout hearts of studio bean counters, never actually vaulted…
Blues legend Bessie Smith was arguably America’s most powerful black woman during her heyday in the 1920s and ’30s. Her reign wasn’t just based on being the highest-paid African-American entertainer of her generation, but, according to the new HBO movie Bessie…
In March, the Miami International Film Festival hosted the Florida premiere of Iris, with fashion icon Iris Apfel herself in the audience, watching the film for the first time. Minutes before, while chatting in the back room of O Cinema Miami Beach, she’d revealed it was her first time watching…
“I’m over people who think they’re funnier than the movie,” says LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson, in the wake of her recent piece, “Stop Laughing At Old Movies, You $@%&ing Hipsters.” Joining her — *in the same room, for the first time ever on the podcast* — as usual…
Sofia Vergara is built like an amphora, a living testament to the form ceramicists throughout the centuries have adored. In the fleet and gloriously ridiculous comedy Hot Pursuit, Vergara plays Daniella Riva, a mobster’s wife who needs to be escorted from San Antonio to Dallas, where she’ll testify against the head of a major drug cartel.
Iris Apfel isn’t exactly a household name, unless we’re talking about very stylish households. From 1950 to 1992, Apfel ran Old World Weavers, the business she cofounded with her husband, Carl, which faithfully re-created antique textiles for use in home decorating.
Always an eagle-eyed portraitist of contemporary Italy and its socioeconomic peccadilloes, Gianni Amelio hasn’t had a film released stateside in more than 15 years, and Intrepido: A Lonely Hero — a strange, gentle, whimsically formulated concoction — may give us a clue as to why.
Though it’s hard to believe in 2015, there was a time when fictional heroines didn’t have to be role models, when a character’s backbone could be more than just a row of vertebrae lined up into teachable moments. It’s wonderful that modern readers love Jane Austen — we still warm…
One of Kristen Wiig’s finest moments as a movie star is a throwaway bit of shamed, silent, morning-after comedy: Her Bridesmaids character is skulking out of the home of a cad played by Jon Hamm. She’s playing it cool, swallowing the humiliation of her bad choices, trying to show him and herself that she doesn’t need him for anything.
One of the most inspired ideas in late-middle Woody Allen pictures comes in Deconstructing Harry, a movie about how Allen loves Bergman, hates Philip Roth, and isn’t quite clear on what “deconstruction” means. Allen stages passages from fiction written by the protagonist, a novelist named Harry; one features Robin Williams…
When sexy bad boy, and self-proclaimed old man, Anthony Bourdain heads to your town, and invites nearly every person in town (unless you’re in the media, ahem) to appear on his incredibly popular CNN show, Parts Unknown, you watch the goddamned thing when it airs. I figured as a sort…
New month means new movies, except we’re focusing on the classics here! So while Avengers: Age of Ultron takes over every multiplex, raking in those millions, here’s a variety of options if you’re looking for something a little more vintage. It’s not everything, but you won’t be short on options any…
Avengers: Age of Ultron director and screenwriter Joss Whedon wants to give us everything in his movie, and that he fits it all in is its own kind of feat, writes LA Weekly film critic Amy Nicholson in her review of the film, which opens May 1. Joining her on…
Depending upon whom you talk to, we live in an era of conformity or one of anything-goes individuality; in a golden age of television or the brightest of movie galaxies. But just about everyone will agree that we’re ruled by screens of all sizes, which means it’s harder than ever…
Jonah Hill will begin filming his new dark comedy, Arms and the Dudes, in Miami today. In the forthcoming film, Hill plays a Efraim Diveroli, a Miami man heavily involved in the international arms-dealing business. Arms and the Dudes is based on the true story of how two stoners from Miami…
Making and/or having a child seems like such a struggle, or at least film has injected that mentality to someone like myself: someone who will eventually resort to adoption or in vitro fertilization (IVF) because of my queerness. With that said, a film like Sebastián Silva’s Nasty Baby doesn’t make…
