newcritics

It’s tempting to just leave this to the Trekkies and the obssessives, to let Star Trek be measured in its franchise terms: money, success, fealty to its origins. Doing that,though, would be a little cruel: Star Trek is an impressive accomplishment not because of how it “reboots” a familiar story, but because it is probably [...]

X-Men Origins: Wolverine isn’t terrible… which is a shame, probably, because if it at least committed to being kind of kicky-bad that would constitute making a choice; as it is, the film sort of muddles along, winding up at somewhat unsatisfying, while teasing you with the notions of a smarter better film in there, [...]

I can’t let Bea Arthur’s passing go by undiscussed, for many reasons.
For one thing, I stand for the idea that all of the stars should be rescued from being overly identified with The Golden Girls; long before Dorothy Zbornak, Bea Arthur was established as a Broadway and Television legend. The Golden Girls was mostly icing [...]

Consider, if you will, the end of The Wizard of of Oz.
I think as critics, we shy away from reexamining the “classics” of film, the real warhorses that are so bulletproof you can’t challenge the accepted wisdom (though it’s fair to counter that, I think, with the question of what, if anything, there’s left to [...]

I’m not the person to write this.
Myself, I think Natasha Richardson was still finding herself as an actress - and really, when we memorialize, we’re talking, as critics, about the work - and worked under the obvious, enormous shadow of her mother. I said as much when I reviewed Evening, where Vanessa Redgrave’s startling performance [...]

As the economic crisis has unfolded, I think a lot of us who care about the arts have been blind-sided by the confluence of politics, economic issues, and the creative enterprises we love. As critics, we exist to experience the thrill of the creative; we are the audience, we are the reactive element. None of [...]

I don’t know what it is about director Zack Snyder and my birthday; two years ago, he and Warner Brothers gave me 300 for my birthday… this year he and Warner Brothers (and Paramount) give me Watchmen.
Not for nothing… but in these hard economic times, a gift card from J Crew would work just as [...]

Wow. Just wow.
Rarely does an Oscar broadcast provide such a memorable moment, but when those panels separated and then flew up, and the five former Best Actresses were standing there… it was shivery. People who say they stood for Sophis Loren… well, it wasn’t just that. You can forget that to be among these winners [...]

If there’s liveblogging of the Oscars - and really, there should be, here of all places - unfortunately, I can’t make it; for the past 5 years or so, I’ve had the opportunity to attend a real live Oscar party in the Big City, where we gather around a big screen TV, buffet meal balanced [...]

Is there a “conservative” movie?

National Review this week insists there is - 25 in fact, not counting the 25 more they relegate to a sad box afterward - and raises the question I so often have with these exercises: can we really classify films in terms of doctrine?
The whole idea matters to criticism, I think, [...]

To know why Slumdog Millionaire will win Best Picture, you don’t need much more than the film’s first ten minutes. Slumdog Millionaire will win because City of God didn’t.
Watching the chase of childhood street urchins through the tenements of Moombai, that hit me clearly: here was a film that got City of God’s point about [...]

Personally, I think it was just a weird year.
As I thought about sketching my ideas of potential nominees for Oscar (my own peculiar way of trendspotting each year), I realized that most of the movies either… didn’t move me, or didn’t interest me. There were dramatic exceptions to this (Milk, Frost/Nixon, Rachel Getting Married top [...]

Valkyrie is emblematic of one of the oddities of the holiday movie season, the big budget star vehicle that could get mistaken for a serious Oscar contender. These films are the holiday season’s box office champs (Valkyrie has proved that Cruise can, still, open a picture, even if he can’t dominate over additional weeks), [...]

I live for this.
No seriously - these are the months I love… the months from Oscar nominations to actual ceremonies (although, if you ask me, it’s criminal that ABC pushed the Academy to put the Oscars into February sweeps and on Sunday night).
I could give chapter and verse of what I love of the Oscars; [...]

To get some idea of the prestige of Frost/Nixon, set aside Frank Langella’s (amazing, Oscar-worthy) performance for a second and consider two of the more throwaway appearances: Toby Jones as Swifty Lazar and Kevin Bacon as Jack Brennan, Nixon’s chief of staff after resignation. Bacon, of course, is film’s ultimate veteran, but his steely precision [...]

Out of almost anyone, Baz Luhrmann is charting the course of the modern epic. Here’s the guy who’s done the biggest, if not the only, freely created new musical on film in the past 10 years (Moulin Rouge!), and one of the best modern dress adaptations of Shakespeare (and warhorse Shakespeare at that, finding new [...]

In the current vampire boomlet, True Blood (HBO, Sundays and elsewhere, and On Demand) serves as the erotic dark side of Twilight’s romantic intentions. Twilight made me tired; True Blood just makes me feel dirty.
Meant, I think, as a way for HBO to challenge the dominance of Showtime After Dark and Cinemax’s More Max softcore [...]

I am more movies than television (and surely, more filmed entertainment than live or recorded music), but there are TV things that I know and this is one of them: the Jay Leno deal is terrible. Horrible.

Set aside for the moment all the lousy mediocrity Leno represents - the middling career, the pale imitation of [...]

Let’s just stipulate up front: It’s hard to mess up the vampire story. Attractive people, baroque settings and outfits, a hint of danger and the forbidden… the thing
really sells itself. When you mess it up - Francis Ford Coppola’s overwrought Bram Stoker’s Dracula comes to mind - it’s usually by overdoing it, not under.
In [...]

At this late date, the biggest obstacle to refreshing the James Bond storyline is the fans.
Everyone, it seems, comes to the table with expectations. There’s even the set of Roger Moore fans who come with expectations… which is just sad, if you ask me. But, more seriously, there are the devotee-purists of Ian Fleming’s original [...]

Let’s set the Mad Men natterings - high toned, upscale criticism - aside for moment, shall we? And let’s be honest - not everything about television is classy. That’s not (solely) why we watch.
I’m not too proud to admit that I watch popular entertainments, the kind sometimes known as “cheesy”. I take real issue with [...]

Paul Newman was one of the Oscar head-scratcher stories; long career, widely respected, clearly popular… yet no Oscar. For years. And years. His first nomination was in 1958 (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as Brick). His big loss was for The Verdict in 1982. It was a long, long time. So long, that the [...]

As fun as it is to get lost in, and quibble with, the exhaustive amount of period detail in Mad Men, that’s not quite where I come from on it. Right or wrong (or more to the point, right AND wrong), the period details of Mad Men are meant, I think, to frame the story [...]

Perhaps the most interesting, under-noted thing about Tropic Thunder is that it lacks women. There are no WAGs (Wives and Girlfriends) to muck up this war-buddy comedy, the only name actress to make a recognizable appearance I saw was Jennifer Love Hewitt, and that was 3 seconds, at the end (it’s the mildly amusing payoff [...]

I wasn’t expecting to join in the weekly blogfest over Mad Men, mostly because with my lack of cable, I’ll be at a certain disadvantage. As it turns out, though, AMC is
making episodes pretty quickly available on iTunes, and the chance to rejoin something I was getting a pretty big kick out of turned [...]

The question of whether Brideshead Revisted is better now or in the fondly remembered 1981 TV version
is the wrong question, as it turns out. Perhaps the film’s best recommendation is that, approached fairly, it renders the comparisons moot. And perhaps that, in itself is proof of its success.
If only things were quite so simple.
Brideshead [...]

A friend and I joked that a lot of Angelina Jolie movies blend into one - you know, the one where she plays the tough badass… spy… who uses a lot of… knives and stuff… while wearing kickass outfits…

Quick, name the movie.
At this stage of her career, Jolie gives great movie star; that’s [...]

Personally, I think one of the hardest challenges for a critic is high praise; when you love something, it’s hard not to go overboard. It’s easy to write a savage pan - just ask Rex Reed - but much harder, I think, to praise a work without drifting into the tendency to make something [...]

When I told my mom I wanted to hijack the family TV for the premiere of Swingtown, her first two words were: tawdry and cheap.
It wasn’t much of a hijack, anyway; given that the regular TV season has limped to a close, there aren’t many choices on TV, certainly not in new scripted dramas (summer, [...]

If you need it in brief: The Sex and The City Movie is fabulous. Go. Now.
If you need it longer, then perhaps you are more like Samantha.
I’m not; but beyond all of the “which SATC girl are you” (the quizzes where the gay boys wind up choosing between Carrie’s Stanford and Charlotte’s Anthony), is where [...]

Years ago, writing a review of The Firm, I wrote “Sydney Pollack directs great dinner parties”; I meant it in the best way possible: the sheen, elegance and taste Pollack brought to filmmaking made for polished, easy to take films. Including The Firm, which in retrospect may well be the best adaptation of Grisham ever, [...]

Since no one sems to have claimed it yet, I think it only fair that the gay guy gets to cover the run-up to The Sex And The City Movie.

The likelihood - even as it goes up Memorial Day weekend against The Movie That Exhumes Harrison Ford - is that SATC will be [...]

Hello, yeah, it’s been a while…
Since I’ve been distracted by politics over at my place, and because I didn’t want to inflict a simple review of Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay on you (now, a comprehensive analysis of the Stoner Comedy, maybe… but I haven’t had the time), I’ve been a little out [...]

It’s usually a risk to see a Broadway show late into its run. For one thing, it’s tired; the performers have been doing 8 shows a week, over and over, and there’s bound to be a certain… lack of freshness. The buzz around even the most amazing show is bound to have slipped as [...]

Given that I started this gig off of Joan’s 100th (or, more likely 103rd), I suppose one ought to consider Bette.
Edward Albee tells this wonderful story - and while it’s been everywhere, it’s somehow more meaningful that he told it to me, and only me, over dinner in a fast food restaurant on North Avenue [...]