With the release of The Battle of the Five Armies, the third and final installment in Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, it should be obvious to…
Shawn Levy’s third Night at the Museum film immediately announces its most disconcerting element— its retrograde Orientalist bent—by opening with a 1934 archaeological excavation in…
The recent controversy over the casting of predominantly white actors in Middle Eastern roles in Exodus: Gods and Kings is, it turns out, the least…
After two Hunger Games films setting the stage for revolution in the future dystopia of PanEm, audiences are apparently finally ready for a third film…
The self-consciously “epic” epic Interstellar is wildly ambitious, massive in scope, gorgeous to look at, often clumsily sentimental, very serious, and frequently overly expository. In…
War in cinema is often treated either as a crucible upon which manhood is tested and goodness defended (Saving Private Ryan) or as a portrait…
Jorge R. Gutierrez wants to teach people about his heritage. He also wants to make colorful, energetic animated films to dazzle a wide audience. With…
David Fincher’s Gone Girl immediately announces its intentions to deconstruct everyday images with a deceptive opening-credits sequence consisting of shots of empty houses, “for sale”…
Having been put on the map by Coraline and Paranorman, stop-motion studio Laika returns with The Boxtrolls, a film which, while ostensibly possessing the same eye-catching visuals…
The first thing you may notice about Jersey Boys is the lighting—or more specifically, the light sources. Set mostly in darkened rooms that look as if all…
It’s probably (no, definitely) pushing it to suggest that Transformers: Dark of the Moon has anything in common with Terrence Malick’s also-currently-in-theaters The Tree of Life,…
Boxing is a sport dependent on mental strategy, despite what its surface-level brutality suggests. In The Fighter, the physically tough but emotionally stricken welterweight boxer…
Some directors spend their entire careers switching effortlessly between genres. Zack Snyder does not. He is an action director, and everything he makes emerges as…
The labyrinthine social hierarchies of David Fincher’s The Social Network facilitate a narrative pinball game; competing male egos, hidden agendas, brooding desires, and palpable anger…
Will Ferrell is a very funny guy who has been accused of doing a certain type, a type he falls into easily, too often. I…
Though made in 2010, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables has more in common with action pictures of days gone by. That’s not to say that the…
The parallels between Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island and Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated Inception form a fascinating Siamese twin. Overlapping themes of familial fissures and regret make up…
“We’re all just trash, waiting to be thrown away…” Consider what it must be like to be a toy in the world of the Toy…
The problem with Kick-Ass is that it has too much Kick-Ass in it. That statement could be read a couple of ways, all true. There’s a…
How to Train Your Dragon is warm and winning—a real charmer of a family film. Given that it’s a product of Dreamworks Studios, who are more…