Category: Actor

  • Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

    Extolling the greatness of Bonnie and Clyde is a little like remarking on how wet rain is. Oceans of ink have been spilled on the significance of this masterpiece nominally about the real-life, Depression-era bank robbers, among the more recent treatises being Mark Harris‘ excellent Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of…

  • The Ant Bully (2006)

    The animated kids’ movie The Ant Bully begins with scrawny, little Lucas Nickle (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen from TV’s Avatar: The Last Airbender) suffering a wedgie at the hands of the neighborhood bully. “What are you gonna do about it?” Lucas’ tormenter asks rhetorically. “Nothing, ’cause I’m big and you’re small.” Almost immediately after…

  • The Exorcist (1973)

    Even 50 years after audiences got the holy bejesus scared outta them in packed movie theaters, The Exorcist remains, in my estimation, one of the most frightening films ever made. Released the day after Christmas in 1973, it almost immediately leapt from blockbuster to cultural phenomenon, fueled by reports at the time of some moviegoers…

  • The One and Only (1978)

    The One and Only must have looked like a surefire hit on paper. After all, the 1978 romantic comedy starred Henry Winkler, aka The Fonz – resident icon at the time of TV’s hugely successful Happy Days – and was helmed by Carl Reiner, who had scored box-office gold the previous year with Oh, God!…

  • Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)

    Based on a series of graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a movie with ADD and a lapsed Ritalin prescription. It moves with bullet-train speed, crackles with wit and packs enough hip pop-culture references to make Chuck Klosterman green with envy. There are nods to arcade games, comic books,…

  • Don’t Worry Darling (2022)

    After all the offscreen drama that surrounded the Venice Film Festival premiere of Don’t Worry Darling, you would have expected a dumpster fire of a movie. But it isn’t that. While Olivia Wilde’s sophomore directorial outing (after 2019’s Booksmart) isn’t an entirely satisfying thriller, it’s also not exactly a dud. Think of it as a…

  • (500) Days of Summer (2009)

    Romantic comedies can be as propagandistic as any jingoistic World War II-era flag-waver, playing in the sandbox of audiences’ lovesick fantasies while paying only lip service to the messy reality of relationships. That’s why you have to admire a picture as cheerfully impish as (500) Days of Summer and the zeal with which it both…

  • Boyhood (2014)

    The swooning of critics over Boyhood upon its theatrical release reached near-embarrassing heights. There’s no getting around it; this is a remarkable movie and a testament to the singular vision of writer-director Richard Linklater. And while that doesn’t make Boyhood an unqualified triumph, its minor deficiencies are more than made up for by its overall…