Big Screen
This is it, folks. Unless you know something I don’t, there will be no new releases next Friday, December 30. (Scott and I will take the occasion to post our two Top Ten Lists, which …
“‘Based on a True Story” has replaced “The Adventure Continues” as Hollywood’s most cringeworthy coming attraction tagline. Just because a narrative is rooted in reality doesn’t mean that its chronicler isn’t going to lie, cheat, …
The Wikipedia entry for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story calls it “a 2016 American epic space opera film.” There’s lots more after that, but let me pause for a moment. “Space opera?” As in …
When was the last time you saw an expressionistic use of color in a trailer, let alone a feature? There was more color in the preview for La La Land than a box of 120 …
I owe my love of Pablo Larraín to the San Diego Latino Film Festival. Their programming of Tony Manero and Post Mortem was tantamount to extracting a giant thorn from this reporter’s paw. Tony Manero …
Individuals who have history thrust upon them frequently make the best movie subjects. Lawrence of Arabia, Melvin and Howard, The Last Emperor, Vera Drake, and many other cinematic profiles have done wonders with a passive …
When asked to name a sequel that surpasses its original, The Godfather, Part II and The Bells of St. Mary’s are always the first to come to mind. (Exorcist II: The Heretic runs a close …
I missed the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters. I also missed both versions of the “awful opera singer” story (Marguerite and Florence Foster Jenkins). Heck, I even missed Denial, despite the fact that it starred personal …
A few weeks ago, a story appeared on The Big Screen about a “critic” who couldn’t manage to make it through a screening without texting. It was greeted with a tidal wave of sympathetic comments …
First-time writer-director Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother feels unnervingly like a Diane Arbus photo that’s been stretched into a film. Which is to say, it’s unnerving, a shadowy black-and-white (well, black-and-gray) image of …
The Museum of Photographic Arts invites you to spend a day in Hollywood walking through the extensive picture collections at the Academy Film Archive. Established in 1991, the Archive currently houses 190,000 items including an …
Duncan Shepherd had it easy. When he slammed a movie, people would accuse him of being elitist or of hating anything that wasn’t foreign (Eastwood and the Coens excepted). Sometimes they would accuse him of …
Why would anyone cancel a phoner with Peter Sarsgaard? The next critic in line did just that, leaving twice the normal allotted time for your Big Screen correspondent. Our talk was meant to promote Sarsgaard’s …
The trailer for Rules Don’t Apply, with its promise of one notorious playboy starring as another equally profligate real-life womanizer, set the bar high. You see, rules don’t apply to Warren Beatty. They never have. …
There will be a free screening of the upcoming Universal Studios release this Saturday morning at 10 am. Here's the catch: you have to be one of the first 200 patrons in line at either …
Curmudgeonly grouch Scott Marks has, like some kind of critical Sam Jackson, had it with these blankety-blank cell phones in the blankety-blank theater! Read all about it here, and then scooch over to his rapturous …