Dns fog
55°
Dns fog
Hi 73° | Lo 40°

Movies / TV

Ethan Hawke, left, and Julie Delpy arrive at the LA premiere of "Before Midnight" at the Director's Guild of America's Theatre on tuesday, May 21, 2013 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

‘Before Midnight’: A Very Long Conversation Has Its Moments

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Richard Linklater made his name in 1991 with Slacker, a low-key, discursive ramble through Austin that introduced a new generation and spontaneous form of filmmaking that concealed surprising intelligence and artfulness beneath its laid-back style. Linklater has gone on to pursue a wonderfully eclectic career, hopping from sci-fi animation ( Waking Life ) to family-friendly comedies ( School of Rock …

A Saintly Superman Comes to Save a Fallen Planet

Saturday, June 15, 2013

A colleague of mine made the astute observation that superhero blockbusters have something in common with medieval religious art. Both rely on rigidly fixed iconographies drawn from a narrow range of canonical subject matter. The individual creator may vary the style, but the terms of the representation are governed by a larger divine or quasi-divine cosmic order: hence the endless variations on the …

Superman Still Super, After All These Years

Friday, June 14, 2013

Seventy-five years after he sprang from the imaginations of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Superman is making another visit to movie screens, in Man of Steel, with Henry Cavill playing the superhero. Coupled with the anniversary of the character’s first comic-book appearance in 1938, the movie at once aims to generate new interest …

Kevin Pearce’s Recovery: Documentary Looks at Snowboarder’s Journey Back

Friday, June 14, 2013

In December 2009, less than two months before he planned to compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, snowboarder Kevin Pearce crashed during a practice run on the half pipe. In Park City, Utah for training, Pearce …

‘This Is the End’ Is an Homage and Send-up of Stoner Films

Friday, June 14, 2013

The apocalyptic satire This Is the End was made for admirers of Seth Rogen and James Franco, who, the movie suggests, may be their own biggest fans. An alternately sly and wildly indulgent exercise in omni-referential humor, This Is the End is accidently true to its title: As …

Marvel Socks DC Comics at Box Office

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Bloomberg News New York — When it comes to box-office dollars, the Avengers and other Marvel superheroes are mightier than DC Comics. Films based on Marvel comic books have generated 47 percent more in U.S. box-office sales on average than DC Comics movies, according to data compiled by …

Vaughn and Wilson Google a Comedy

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Believability has no place in The Internship. This is a movie in which two middle-aged men, both suddenly unemployed and, in one case, facing foreclosure, decide their wisest move is to apply for unpaid internships at Google even …

Stars Gather To Honor Brooks

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Associated Press Los Angeles — Robert De Niro and Morgan Freeman never worked with Mel Brooks, and the Oscar winners came to a ceremony in his honor to let him know they resent it. Brooks received the American …

Latest ‘Fast & Furious’ Flick: All Horsepower, No Brainpower

Saturday, June 1, 2013

If Fast & Furious 6 were any dumber, the script would have been written in crayon. But no one goes to any installment in this car-chase, skull-bashing slam-o-rama expecting education, enlightenment or, heck, even a story that makes …

Documentary Looks at History Of Copper Mines in Upper Valley

Friday, May 31, 2013

Phyl Harmon began her documentary about the history of the Upper Valley copper mines in 1995 by interviewing the last surviving men who’d worked in them. Many of those men have since died, but Harmon’s film, Riches and …

Will Smith’s Kid Has the Weight of Worlds on His Shoulders

Friday, May 31, 2013

What do you give the kid who has everything? His own summer action-adventure blockbuster, of course. That’s exactly what Will Smith has done for his 14-year-old son, Jaden, with After Earth, a sci-fantasy film based on a story …

Cannes Films Focus on Transition, but Many Seem Stalled

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Cannes, France — Every film festival presents the temptation to find an overarching theme, even if a filmgoer has to stand on her tippy-toes to find it. But even to the most jaded, this year’s Cannes Film Festival presented undeniable links, not just between the films being shown …

The Party’s Over in This ‘Hangover’

Saturday, May 25, 2013

After The Hangover Part II, more than one critic took filmmaker Todd Phillips to task for too slavishly following the first movie’s winning formula, ingredient for ingredient. For a story so heavily dependent on the element of surprise …