Scott Renshaw

At a pivotal moment in the new Jackie Robinson biopic 42, Brooklyn Dodgers owner Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford) tries to console Robinson (Chadwick Boseman), who’s furious over the abuse and humiliation he’s required to endure stoically as the first black player in major-league baseball. “You’re medicine, Jack,” Rickey solemnly intones, trying to impress upon the […]

In June 1993, I stood in line at a Northern California multiplex with my then-roommates, awaiting our showtime for Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. One of them in particular had been giddy for weeks leading up to the opening, and to him the reason for such anticipation was self-evident. “Big mechanical lizards!” he would intone with […]

Provocateur: It’s such a loaded, even lazy term. Sure, it might seem to apply to Spring Breakers writer/director Harmony Korine as much as it would to any filmmaker. After all, he is the guy whose career launched as a teenager with the script for Larry Clark’s incendiary teens-in-trouble opus Kids, and whose output has included […]

Sure, I may be a film critic—but I’m also an American. I’ve got my pride in our nation’s accomplishments, and I don’t like seeing its institutions in peril. Which is why Olympus Has Fallen—about an assault by North Korean terrorists on the White House—had me muttering angrily to myself: “Why couldn’t this have been the […]

Funny—like former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s legendary line about pornography—is an “I know it when I see it” proposition. Often, nothing will kill a joke faster than trying to analyze it. But The Incredible Burt Wonderstone offers a useful teaching moment in comedy principles. And one of them is that nothing can throw an […]

Bet as many Lincolns as you can scrape together on Daniel Day-Lewis taking Best Actor. Anne Hathaway will be carrying away a Supporting Actress gold statuette for dreaming a dream. And you can Argo to the bank on Ben Affleck’s film as a Best Picture favorite. In several 2013 Academy Award categories, the only suspense […]

Look, I’m gonna be frank here: This whole paranormal and/or apocalyptic teen romance subgenre that appears to have taken over young-adult literature, movies and the world? It needs to die—and in a way that does not permit a supernatural resurrection. Of course, there are going to be exceptions. Just a couple of weeks ago, Warm […]

Steven Soderbergh recently announced his retirement from making feature films—and it was a bleak day for those who think “genre” is a dirty word to movie lovers. Because if Soderbergh has proven anything over the course of his 20-plus-year filmmaking career, it’s that there’s no broad concept that can’t be executed with professionalism and style: […]