newcritics

Back in the summer of 1990, 18 years ago, I had nothing better to do, so I went to see Days of Thunder, a Don Simpson-Jerry Bruckheimer vanity production in service to the vanity of its producers, its director (Tony Scott) and its star, Tom Cruise. It was the reunion of Scott and Cruise with [...]

For all the heat they take from critics, and even from audiences when genre-busting and general disregard for the rules of storytelling are significant elements in the appeal of some of the past year’s best movies, there is something to be said for formulas. Because when they work, when the director is alive to the [...]

The last few months have been fertile times for those interested in seeing and hearing rock and roll on the big screen, and for those compelled to investigate and/or dismantle its mythologies, self-perpetuated or not. Todd Haynes dug into six sides of the publicly orchestrated persona of Bob Dylan, and exploded the conventions of the [...]

Is it some kind of heresy, or blasphemy, or out-and-out idiocy to admit that sometimes I miss the dark ages before instant gratification became an expectation, an entitlement in the long shadow of VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and whatever configuration is next up on the horizon to make whatever format you’re backing obsolete? Remember those headless [...]

“To some, The Big Lebowski is just a movie. To others it is the movie. When we decided to get some friends together at a tiny bowling alley in Kentucky to drink White Russians and celebrate our favorite movie, Lebowski fest was born. We discovered we were not alone, and fellow fans from around the [...]

”If Southland’s smugness doesn’t get to you, then its barriers of built-in self-protection should. The film is designed so that any of the obvious critical grenades one can lob at it can be deflected with the force of a fly swatter: try “scattershot,” “messy,” “inelegant,” “politically confused” and its defenders will follow the Richard Kelly [...]