Dilettante Steve Antin proves the adage that persistence counts for more than talent in Hollywood. His resume is a scatter of acting, writing, production, and…
Some fathers are born, some are made, and some were never meant to be. Jorge Machado, a Mayan fisherman, was evidently born to be a…
Only the resentful or the contrarian could undervalue Xavier Dolan’s I Killed My Mother as an achievement both professional and cinematic. Written, produced, and directed…
It’s an ironic kind of blessing when the tag “Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films present” is appended to a film’s opening titles. You…
Neil Jordan is one of those directors whose reputation mysteriously exceeds his productivity. Few of his films stand out as anything more than thrill or…
The films of writer/director Nicole Holofcener are trim and personal, lit with the light of real life and warmed by the friction of relationships bumping…
Frederick Wiseman’s latest doc was designed with the precision of an arabesque and contains a lesson on just how much precision an arabesque actually requires.…
Martin Scorsese has been letting us down for years, helming the sort of film that was roasted in 1992’s The Player, but which still gets…
“You’ve never experienced anything like it,” gushed the LA Times about Avatar, James Cameron’s motion-capture extravaganza. And if you aren’t a Cameron connoisseur or an…
Plenty, this writer included, are pretty hard on Nicolas Cage. He’s one of those actors whose films I eventually had to avoid because of my…
Steven Soderbergh made an interesting choice in telling the story of Mark Whitacre, the agri-food exec who turned informant and paid a price. Part fraud,…
The moment an actor signs on to impersonate a well-known figure in a film is the moment that actor gives up any chance of delivering…