Monthly Archives: December 2014

“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 →

Still waters may run deep, as the old saying goes. But “Beside Still Waters” there’s nothing deeper than “The Big Chill.” Yes, it’s another knockoff of “Chill” and “Return of the Secaucus Seven”, another gathering of young “old friends” at … Continue reading →

The evolving state of Britain’s soccer hooligans is explored, one bloody beating or brutal brawl at a time, in the imported Brit drama, “Green Street Hooligans: Underground.” It’s the third in a series of films about the two-fisted fans of … Continue reading →