From the studio that last year brought you Dark Shadows, Snow White and the Huntsman and other monstrosities comes Jack the Giant Slayer, another effects-driven behemoth that buries its human elements beneath the shiny stuff that kids like. The film was marketed as an “adult” take at the Jack and the Beanstalk legend. If that’s…
At various points in the run-up to the 85th Oscars on Sunday night, nearly every nominee for Best Picture found cause to associate itself with President Obama or Congress. For some films, like Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lincoln, it was a natural fit. Others had to try a little harder. Beasts of the Southern…
Conspiracy theorists, start your engines. When early front-runner Zero Dark Thirty won but one Oscar on Sunday night, it marked quite a fall from grace. For most of awards season, it was the prohibitive favorite for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and most of the technical awards. Of course, we all know what happened.…
Earlier this week, The New Republic published a scathing and moralistic piece by Thomas Hackett about the Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild. While he begrudgingly praises the film’s “excitement for the surprising places artful imagery and editing can take us,” he ends up making the rather inflammatory claim that the film is “patronizing and…
At various points during this awards season that culminates Sunday night at the Academy Awards, there have been three prohibitive favorites for the Best Picture Oscar. For most of the fall, prognosticators assumed Zero Dark Thirty would take home Oscar gold. After the controversy over that film’s depiction of torture reached a fever pitch and…
The question is not whether A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth film in which grizzled New York cop John McClane fails to acquiesce to the ending implicit in its title, is worth seeing. It’s not. It’s a terrible, terrible movie. The only question is where your mind will wander while the film fails…
When I told my friends I was going to see Top Gun during its brief 3D theatrical re-release (which ends this week), nobody was particularly impressed. When I mentioned that I had never seen it before, their eyes widened, and each put forth some variation of the same question: “How is that possible?” The film…
The mind behind the words of the White House’s most accomplished orator is leaving for Hollywood. Yesterday, news broke that Jon Favreau, who has been Obama’s lead speechwriter since the early Senate days, will leave the White House on March 1st and try his hand at screenwriting. File this one under “another one bites the…
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