also playing Possibly the most hyped movie in a generation, the seventh film in the space opera franchise that began in 1977 is the first without George Lucas’ creative control, as he sold the rights to Disney for $4 billion. And thank God. The Force Awakens, a spectacularly enjoyable thrill ride, is both a true…
From the moment it was announced 15 years ago, the film adaptation of The Danish Girl, David Ebershoff’s acclaimed literary novel about one of the first men to have sex reassignment surgery, was a prestige project, a magnet for Oscars. For 15 years, artists of the caliber of Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Lasse Halstrom and…
Just in time for Thanksgiving, the capstone of The Hunger Games series has arrived to give us the dark, bleak and oddly satisfying ending we may not want but do deserve. Mockingjay – Part 2 has continued the regrettable trend of splitting franchise finale films into two, ostensibly to give space for the whole story,…
It is now taken for granted that the Catholic Church’s priests sexually abused thousands, if not tens of thousands, of children over the last 50 years and that the Church hierarchy covered it up, quietly settling lawsuits, moving abusers from parish to parish, and doing very little to stop the abuse from happening or occurring…
Every so often a woman escapes from the clutches of a mad kidnapper who has held her, and often other women, and often the children born in captivity, in a dank basement, a locked attic or a backyard shed. I always think it can be hard to turn these kinds of stories into serious art;…
As I’ve written before, no one should ever expect historical accuracy from a feature film that is “based on a true story.” I can’t fault the total fantasy of Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for Steve Jobs, the new biopic about the co-founder of Apple who is constantly referred to as a genius, a visionary and an…
After Roland Emmerich, the gay, German-born director of The Fourth of July and The Day After Tomorrow, learned about the plight of homeless LGBT youth, he decided to make a movie about them, and that movie transmogrified into the story of homeless LGBT youth who helped start the 1969 Stonewall riots. This is a laudable…
After Looking was canceled by HBO, a number of people complained that gay men who criticized, occasionally viciously, the show did more than hurt Looking – they made it harder for shows about gay men to be made. I think it’s possible that this is true, that the failure of Looking to find a large…
Lily Tomlin is having a very good year. That’s not saying too much. The 76-year-old actress and comedian has been considered one of the funniest people in America for more than 50 years, and she’s had some great years. She became a regular on Laugh In in 1970, was nominated for an Oscar for being…
In decades past, political pundits referred to the final few weeks leading to the presidential election as the “silly season” of politics. Nowadays, the silly season is more or less the three years leading up to the election, and if you haven’t noticed it, the three-ring circus that is the Donald Trump-led Republican nomination contest…
