We've got issues.
Macbeth might not be Shakespeare’s most sophisticated play — it is nasty, brutish and short — and yet, among the tragedies, it remains my personal favorite, if only because it contains the most blunt and chilling expression of nihilism yet registered in the English language. Continue reading
Spotlight is a brilliant piece of meta-storytelling: a film that tells a story about how another story was found. In early 2002, the The Boston Globe’s Spotlight team published a story uncovering years of hidden abuse by Catholic priests. That piece is out there, online, for anyone to read. But what director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) and his co-writer Josh Singer tease out, in a movie that plays like a quiet, tense thriller, is how that story came to be — and how it took decades to come to light. Continue reading
Recipe for an emotional pummeling: A mother and her 5-year-old son are locked up in a dank shed, held hostage by an evil piece of white shit who makes routine visits for creaky sex acts while the kid counts time, faking sleep in a tiny closet. Mom was abducted seven years ago, which means that the tight walls of “room” are all the child knows, all he comprehends of the world: his universe is a sink, bed, tub, table, television and the shed’s single skylight revealing endless blue nothingness. Continue reading
Mockingjay Part 2 has no illusions about being anything but the final movie in a series. There are no reminders, no “previously, on The Hunger Games” montages to put you back in the story; it just starts, opening on a Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who is, as we so often see her, bruised but not broken. Which, in a nutshell, is the problem with this movie: It doesn’t know how to grapple with the way that book-Katniss really is broken, traumatized and angry after all she’s been through. Continue reading
Local filmmaker Daniel Eli Dronsfield shared with Eugene Weekly today a short video he made about Kesey Square and business owner Ali Emami, who says he'd like to keep the square as public space.. Continue reading
Someday, a movie will be worthy of Carey Mulligan again. An Education deserved her; little else has, though her sharp performance in Inside Llewyn Davis was a highlight. Mulligan is so delicate looking, so fresh-faced, that filmmakers either underestimate her or don’t know what to do with her. Like Brie Larson, so prickly and good in Room, she hides a steeliness behind wide eyes. I want to see her play a superhero, but she’d probably get cast as the sidekick. Continue reading
James Bond is a real son-of-a-bitch. Emotionally withdrawn and given to bouts of depression, the agent known as 007 is a classic anti-hero — sadistic, taciturn and misanthropic, he is an assassin driven by the icy requisites of duty but given to the thrill of stepping outside the lines when he smells a rat within his own intelligence organization. Continue reading
In regards to the Rocky Horror Picture Show review that was published today, it has been brought to our attention that the cast names were inaccurate. We are incredibly sorry for this mistake and oversight. We have learned our lesson and will do everything we can to insure we don't make a mistake like that again. We have posted the corrected article here. Continue reading
Dear Guillermo del Toro: Qué pasó? Did someone hijack your latest movie, Crimson Peak, and simply keep your name on the writing and directing credits? I smell a rat. Maybe Tony Scott? No, sorry, he’s dead. Please tell me it wasn’t Michael Bay. Anybody but Michael Bay. Continue reading
Neil Simon’s play Lost in Yonkers (1991) asks one of life’s universal questions: Why is my family so crazy? Simon is an accessible, sentimental and popular playwright. And Very Little Theatre wrings all the sentimentality it can from a strong and winning production. Set in 1942, Lost in Yonkers tells the story of Eddie and his family. Eddie (Paul Rhoden) has gone into debt covering his recently deceased wife’s medical costs. Continue reading