While watching Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street last month, I jotted in my notes: “Just try to write about this without mentioning Goodfellas”. So there’s that challenge already failed. After all, as everyone has noted, Wolf and 1990’s Goodfellas share quite a bit of cinematic and structural DNA, not just through the obvious … More The Wolf of Wall Street: What’s So Funny About Greed, Ludes, and Unchecked Capitalism?

A decade ago, directors David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson’s artistic paths crossed streams. Anderson started out in the mid-‘90s dabbing at genre with the gritty down-and-out drama Hard Eight (aka Sydney) and then exploding into the full-blown backstage, “a star is porn” faux-musical Boogie Nights. Around the same time, Russell was grabbing critical … More David O. Russell, American Hustler

There are a million reasons (about $100 million budgetary ones, to be exact) that I should hate Ben Stiller’s new adaptation of James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, written by Steve Conrad and directed by and starring Stiller. For this latest update (following the 1947 Danny Kaye version), Walter Mitty (Stiller) is now … More The Secret Life of Ben Stiller

Well, it’s better–at least more entertaining–than last winter’s first Hobbit film. So there’s that. But, like Gandalf and his fellow wizards and elf lords catching vague feelings of growing darkness in the wind, for us long-time Tolkien fans (and us fans of Peter Jackson’s decade-old Lord of the Rings film trilogy) there’s a creeping sense … More The Hobbit: The Desolation of Tolkien

There are times—and they come at me more frequently these days—when I feel out of step with everything and everyone. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go into full sobbing mental breakdown right here in the first paragraph—I’ll save that for later. But when I see the movie-going public go ga-ga for a dull, corporate … More The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: You Say You Want a Revolution?

Documentarian Alex Gibney has made a name for himself by examining the murky morality of our leaders and institutions. His films’ topics have included the Bush Administration’s war in Iraq (2007’s Taxi to the Dark Side), the scandals that brought down political figures (2010’s Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer and Casino … More Interview: The Armstrong Lie Writer-director Alex Gibney

(Don’t complain about the title – I came this close to using “I Just Flew in from Asgard and Boy are My Arms Thor!” Consider yourselves lucky.) When you stop and think about it, little about Thor the Comic-book Superhero makes sense. (By that I mean little about Thor the character makes sense—nothing at all … More Theriously, Whath’s Up With Thor?

Brothers Alan and Gabe Polsky made their mark in 2009 producing Werner Herzog and Nicholas Cage’s fairly awesome (and I’m so not kidding about that) Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. But what the brothers really wanted to do was direct, and this month brings to theaters and VOD their directorial debut The Motel … More Interview: The Motel Life Co-directors Alan and Gabe Polsky

I was struggling a bit with my reactions to the new film adaptation of Ender’s Game. No, not because of the loud, kinda silly, kinda self-righteous, kinda deserved finger wagging and soap-boxing about novel author Orson Scott Card’s outspoken anti-gay brain vomitings. (To be clear, Card’s views on marriage equality deserve derision and mockery, but … More Ender’s Game: Playing at Shock and Awe

The historical drama Wolfskinder is set in East Prussia (present-day northern Poland) in 1946. The film by first-time feature writer-director Rick Ostermann follows fictional orphaned brothers Hans (13-year-old Levin Liam) and Fritz (10-year-old Patrick Lorenczat) as they and other children struggle to survive in the wilderness. But while fictional, Wolfskinder is based on the real-life … More Interview: Wolfskinder Writer-director Rick Ostermann