Since bursting forth on the page in 1887, magnifying glass in hand, Sherlock Holmes has been depicted on screen more than 250 times, gaining him the Guinness Book of World Records title of “most portrayed literary human character in film & TV.” Benedict Cumberbatch is the latest to try on the famous detective’s deerstalker hat […]
Film
Short, But Powerful
Short stories are a different creature, with quicker, more nimble storylines than their feature length counterparts, and often populated with instantly dynamic characters. Without time to meander, the narratives and characters often spring right into action, hurtling directly toward the conclusion. They are exciting, punchy creations. The short film category—including live action, animation, and documentary—also […]
Welcome Back Fellini
The Great Beauty takes a while to take on a structure—and, with true Fellini dreaminess, rarely holds onto a cohesive storyline. The film opens with a seemingly unrelated scene—a lyrical and sun-dappled scene as Japanese tourists explore one of Rome’s hillside chapels, before one man drops dead from a heart attack—and then jumps to a […]
Jack Ryan: Hot Idiot Recruit
Have you ever dated somebody who was super good-looking, but there wasn’t really a connection, and you were pretty sure they were straight-up dumb, but they got a pass because it’s fun to make out with hot people and you decided not to care about substance? And you knew in your heart that it was […]
Dyslectics of the World Untie!
Harvey Hubbell V has created a humorous look on a serious challenge: dyslexia, a disorder he himself struggles with and chronicles in his latest film, Dislecksia: The Movie. At one point the screen fills with a montage of his childhood report cards written in teachers’ 1960s penmanship: “He can barely write his own name,” “He […]
Give This Movie an Oscar
Crash Reel is not a film that will be shown by NBC during the 2014 Sochi Olympics. The remarkable documentary plainly, candidly and beautifully tells the story about Kevin Pearce, a top snowboarder and probably Shaun White’s biggest (and only?) rival—that is, until his accident. The story is fairly well-known, but even if you don’t […]
The House I Live In
For the past decade, New York-based director Eugene Jarecki has been making engaging and smart documentaries about some of the most thorny political and social issues in America. With MTV quickness and PBS intelligence, the films tell epic stories about where public polices intersect with personal lives. His most recent, produced by a dynamic duo […]
Future Sex, Love Sounds
Old people love Village Inn. Love it. For starters, nothing about the place has changed since 1958—and at a certain age reliability itself becomes of chief importance. Over Christmas, I busted my fantastic 88-year-old grandmother out of her retirement home and then floored it to Village Inn. Where, over lunch, she leaned over her tomato […]
Make Room for the Premier Award Ceremony
Two days before Christmas, and just in time to qualify his latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street for this year’s Oscar Awards, director Martin Scorsese hosted a screening for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts, the governing organization that has handed out Oscars each year since 1929. Although the film has roundly […]
Watch these Movies
Rockshow: Paul McCartney and Wings In 1976, Paul McCartney was peaking, again. It wasn’t a decade earlier, when adolescent girls screamed so hard that they fainted, but by the mid-’70s McCartney had moved on to more conceptual projects when he and the band Wings took on a 31-stadium Wings Over America Tour—his first in the […]

