How does a small tale of love found and lost emerge as a major triumph and one of the very best movies of the year? Marriage Story is more than just a career high for writer-director Noah Baumbach (The Meyerowitz Stories, The Squid and the Whale); it’s a peerless showcase …
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Tim Heidecker is running for District Attorney of San Bernadino, California. Or, to put it in a slightly more accurate way: “Tim Heidecker” is “running” for “District Attorney” of the small SoCal town. You don’t need to have watched the comedian’s groundbreaking, brain-grinding sketch series with Eric Wareheim, Tim and …
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They say it’s all in the timing, especially when it comes to funny business. But in The Hustle everyone’s inner comedic clock is calamitously off. The setups are flat, the jokes don’t land and the actors don’t — or won’t — connect. How does this happen in a movie that …
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Midway through the fifth and final season premiere of the CW’s warmhearted telenovela Jane the Virgin, the eponymous heroine (Gina Rodriguez) spends a seven-minute-plus scene gradually freaking out over the apparent resurrection of her late husband, Michael (Brett Dier), and what it may mean for her and her family. “We’re …
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Some parents expect their children to grow up and become doctors, lawyers, CEOs. Ricky and Julia Knight wanted their kids to become WWE superstars. Wrestling is the family business for the Knights, who run an amateur organization — the World Association of Wrestling, we’re sure you’ve heard of it — …
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It starts with a woman being bashed in the face with a tire-jack (get it?!) and ends, literally, in hell. In between those two particular poles of depravity, Lars von Trier‘s The House That Jack Built “treats” viewers to a litany of violent images: stranglings, shootings, stabbings, beatings, bludgeonings, post-mortem …
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Welcome to an R-rated summer funfest … with the substance and staying power of a helium balloon. It’s a trip, at least until the laughing gas sputters and evaporates. Based on a true story (reported in a 2013 article in the Wall Street Journal), this comedy foillows a group of …
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A man in a uniform is standing on the beach, staring at the sea. Natives trudge along the shore behind him. His profile makes him look like a statue, the sort of noble “Hail the conquering hero!” sculpture you’d see in national galleries. His name is Don Diego de Zama …
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On August 21, 2015, three American buddies from Sacramento – Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos – were vacationing in Europe. The Air Force medic, Oregon National Guardsman and college student at Sacramento State, respectively, left Amsterdam together and boarded the high-speed 15:17 Thalys train to Paris. Ayoub El …
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Kate Winslet is on fire in Woody Allen‘s Wonder Wheel, playing Ginny, an unhappily married waitress living near the boardwalk on Brooklyn’s Coney Island circa 1950. This broken dreamer is pushing 40 and reaching the limits of her patience with Humpty (a solidly affecting Jim Belushi), the carousel-operator she married …
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