Film

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 […]

What I keep hearing in my head is: Escape from Oz. I had no trouble keeping the title straight before I saw the film. But apparently the mere act of watching—and it was pretty mere—has infected me with a desire to be somewhere else, much like most movies that come out just after the Oscars. […]

This is the worst Jason Bourne movie yet. What were they thinking? Wait, what? This is supposed to be a Die Hard movie? That can’t be. It starts out all, like, CIA—shaky zooms on worried wonks in supertech control rooms on one side of the planet and an opening gambit that I swear is swiped […]

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: […]

What if zombies were self-aware? That simple premise launches the zombie comedy Warm Bodies, as we meet R, a zombie who lives at the airport with a bunch of other zombies, walking around aimlessly and periodically going out to look for people to eat. He and his best friend zombie, M, hang out, exchanging meaningful […]

Zombie films have been around since movies began, but two-thirds of all zombie movies have been made since 2000. That proliferation has created subgenres, including the zombie comedy. At the top of the list: Zombieland (2009): Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg star in this road trip comedy set in a land filled with zombies. Shaun […]