I once reveled in mocking and deriding Tom Cruise for the obvious reasons: the shallow All-American Super-Jock swagger; the intense self-deprecatingly positivity; the mish-mash of film choices from soggily pretentious Oscar-lickers (Born on the Fourth of July, Rain Man, The Last Samurai) to cloying, image polishers (A Few Good Men, Jerry McGuire) to silly popcorn … More Edge of Tomorrow: Cruise, Again and Again
Last summer, upon surviving The Lone Ranger, I felt I’d finally come to some sort of Zen-like epiphany about these giant Disney marketing events masquerading as “movies”: They aren’t really films at all; not in any classic sense of what cinema is, what it means. My weary separate peace with these packaged, pre-sold, cross-promoted, brand-leveraged, … More Maleficent: Witches Be Crazy
Last fall I chatted with writer-director Jim Mickle about his cannibal-family horror film We Are What We Are. As we discussed the style of that film, Mickle (who comes off incredibly nice and intellectually and artistically curious) mentioned that his next film was set in the ’80s and had a very different, more neon, visual … More Interview: Cold in July Writer-director Jim Mickle
Most Americans know English artist Ralph Steadman through the splatter-mad satiric illustrations he did for Hunter S. Thompson’s books and articles, most famously 1971’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. That was certainly the case with me when I attended a Steadman (splatter) signing in London in 1986. But from there I came to love … More Interview: For No Good Reason Director Charlie Paul and Producer Lucy Paul
When you interview someone for an arts piece, there are numerous competing agendas at play, including: 1) What you, the interviewer, personally want to know, are curious about. 2) What you think is important for others to know. 3) What the average reader would probably find the most interesting, what will make the interview “pop.” … More Interview: Actress-turned-nun Mother Dolores Hart
At a time when we’re about to be overrun for the season by loud, dumb, nonsensical, pointless action bloat at the box office, a small, quiet, brutal film like Blue Ruin reminds us why genre still matters. Funded in party by Kickstarter, Blue Ruin shows how something as simple and familiar as a rural revenge … More Interview: Blue Ruin Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier
As an actor, John Turturro grabbed attention in the ’90s in films by Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, Jungle Fever, Clockers, He Got Game, Girl 6, Summer of Sam, She Hate Me, and Miracle at St. Anna) and the Coen Brothers (Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, and O Brother, … More Interview: John Turturro, Writer-director-star of Fading Gigolo
There’s always the danger with reductionist film making that sticking with a single character and/or location–as in films like Castaway, Phone Booth, and Buried–will come off as more of a stunt than an actual film. That’s certainly not the case in writer-director Steven Knight’s new film Locke, starring Tom Hardy as Ivan Locke, an ordinary … More Interview: Locke Writer-director Steven Knight
Drawing on the real-life WWII heroics of Pinchas Tibor Rosenbaum, Walking with the Enemy tells the story of Elek (Jonas Armstrong), a young Hungarian Jew who, in the final months of the war, donned an SS uniform and posed as a German officer in order to save hundreds of Jews in Budapest. Working from his … More Interview: Walking with the Enemy Stars Jonas Armstrong and Simon Dutton
You may have heard that Under the Skin is an adaptation of Michel Faber’s 2000 novel. It is and it isn’t; at times the film strips away much of the book’s plot and details, leaving a very bare-bones abstraction. You may have heard that Under the Skin is the third feature film from writer-director Jonathan … More Interview: Under the Skin Writer-Director Jonathan Glazer
Hammer & Thump 