TAMMY Opens Friday Melissa McCarthy can be very funny. Click around online for the gag reel from Bridesmaids or This is 40 to see what a formidable improv comic she is. Unfortunately, the first few scenes of TAMMY, McCarthy’s first headlining comedy, come off surprisingly lame. An “uh-oh” feeling hangs in the air. Then the […]
Glenn McDonald
Posted inFilm & Television
A study in stillness in Ida
IDA Opens Friday Very cold and very beautiful, director Pawel Pawlikowski’s IDA requires careful attention. Photographed in highly textured black-and-white, with a lean plot and sparse dialogue, it’s the sort of film whose depths must be actively plumbed. In the frigid winter of rural Poland in 1962, a teenage nun named Anna is weeks away […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: Abortion fuels an unlikely but winning rom-com in Obvious Child
Obvious Child★★★1/2 Now playingObvious Child is the kind of underdog indie movie that just makes you glad all over. Glad that the people responsible made it. Glad that other people, with more money, were smart enough to get it into theaters. Glad that you saw it, and glad that other people will see it, too. […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Weird pacing undercuts strong performances in this dark post-apocalyptic drama
THE ROVER Opens Friday In 1983, ABC aired The Day After, a made-for-TV movie about the effects of a nuclear war in small-town America. It was hyped as the scary movie to end all scary movies. At the tender age of 11, I was forbidden to watch it. Naturally, I sneaked down to the basement […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: Palo Alto
Palo Alto ★★1/2 Now playing Teenagers are pitiful, terrible creatures. Hmm, that sounds a bit harsh, but here’s what I mean: They’re pitiful in that they deserve pity, and terrible in that they’re simply incomplete. They’re not fully formed people yet, and as such they don’t function very well. It’s a miracle any of us […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Time-traveling mutants in X-Men: Days of Future Past
It’s a sobering moment in a nerd’s life when the comic book movie finally loses its appeal. X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST is the latest installment in the superhero franchise, and it’s about as well-done as these movies can be. The story is tight, the characters are compelling and the action sequences are bananas. But […]
Posted inGuides
The last (outdoor) picture show
I was precisely 8 years old the last time I went to a drive-in movie. I remember because it was my birthday, and my mom forced my older brother Kenny, 18 at the time, to bring me along on a date with his girlfriend. Kenny, as you might expect, was not enthused. Once we parked, […]
Posted inCulture
Movie review: God’s Pocket
God’s Pocket ★★½ Now playing Mickey Scarpato is having a bad week. A barely employed trucker in the hardscrabble Philly neighborhood known as God’s Pocket, Mickey hustles fast cash by working with low-level gangsters to steal sides of beef off delivery trucks. Mickey’s friends owe him money, but they also owe the mob money—and the […]
Posted inFilm & Television
Stylish vampire romance in Only Lovers Left Alive
ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE Opening Friday Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston play aging, anxious vampires in ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, the new joint from relentlessly stylish filmmaker Jim Jarmusch. Darkly funny and perfectly cast, the film seems to pretend that no other vampire movies have been made in the last 50 years, which is both […]
Posted inFilm & Television
New film Joe has deep roots in North Carolina
Advance word on Joe, the new film from director David Gordon Green, has been that it’s a return to form for both the director and its star, Nicolas Cage. It tells the story of an ex-con (Cage) who befriends a 15-year-old (Tye Sheridan) who’s on the brink of following his father into a brutal life […]