Monthly Archives: December 2014

You can have your costumed crusaders, your “Terminator” retreads, your J.J. Abram reinvents this or that. “Mad Max: Fury Road” is the one I’m looking forward to. Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, sort of splitting up the Mel Gibson role (she … Continue reading →

“Birdman” collected four Screen Actor’s Guild Award nominations today — with Michael Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone singled out for actor, supporting actor and actress. “Boyhood”did almost as well, with Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke and the ensemble collecting honors. … Continue reading →

With all the timely cultural commentary Chris Rock has been making about Ferguson, Staten Island, police chokeholds and the like while doing interviews ostensibly promoting his new film, it’s actually a relief that “Top Five” is pretty good. Decades into … Continue reading →

“Inherent Vice” is a stoner “Chinatown” as directed by Wes Anderson, if Wes got sick midway through it and the darker Paul Thomas Anderson took over for the last acts. Actually, only one Anderson — Paul Thomas (“The Master,” “There … Continue reading →

“Luckily,” Josh Brolin growls, “I don’t take these characters personally.” Some times he’s the “No Country for Old Men” anti hero, sometimes Brolin plays villains (“American Gangster”), corrupt to the core. But if you want him to pick up another … Continue reading →

Sprawling and spectacular, brawny and bloody, Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” stabs an exclamation point onto a year peppered with religious films, one that began with the less conventional and trippier “Noah.” This is Old Testament as action epic, … Continue reading →

Prison doesn’t suit Santa. Yeah, his long white hair and beard are perfectly weavable into prison dreadlocks. Call him “Mad” Jimmy Claus and try to get him to talk tough, maybe the other cons won’t eat him alive. But surely … Continue reading →

Josh Brolin just kills in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice,” a dark Thomas Pynchon drug culture/generation gap comedy set in 1970. Brolin plays a brutish LA detective named Bigfoot “who has the twinkle of civil rights violation in his eyes,” … Continue reading →

“Miss Julie,” August Strindberg’s 19th century drama about class and that Darwinian fixation of the nobility, “breeding,” comes to austere life in an adaptation by the Swedish actress-turned-director Liv Ullmann. She has re-set the Swedish tale in 1890s Ireland, and … Continue reading →