The strongest of my genre expectations is that every film will exist in some sort of genre. And then, I expect that the conventions of that genre will convene, maybe with a few slips or surprises, but nothing more. When a film like Colossal comes along – a film that defies, ignores, mashes up and…
dvd of the week More divisive than any of Christopher Nolan’s films, Interstellar is a long, slow, brainy and, to me, enthralling and thrilling science fiction epic. In the near future, Earth is becoming inhospitable to life and a now-secret NASA is sending ships to parts of the galaxy to find a new home for…
dvd of the week Based on Victor Hugo’s classic 1862 French novel about an ex-convict struggling to overcome his past (among several other plots), the musical version of Les Misérables is one of the few Broadway blockbusters that is as good as it is popular. When Tom Hooper, fresh from winning an Oscar for The…
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – Nominations for the 85th Academy Awards® were announced today (Thursday, January 10) by this year’s Oscar host, Seth MacFarlane, and actress Emma Stone. MacFarlane and Stone announced the nominees at a 5:38 a.m. PT live news conference attended by more than 400 international media representatives. Academy members from each of the…
I saw about 75 movies in 2012, and while I saw a couple dozen that I liked a great deal, very few movies about LGBT people or queer themes were given a wide release. And that is disappointing in general, but particularly for a critic writing for a paper called San Diego LGBT Weekly. This…
Last week, the San Diego Film Critics Society, of which I am a member, chose Argo as the best film of the year. It also won best director (Ben Affleck), best adapted screenplay (Chris Terrio), and best editing (William Goldenberg). While that movie was released more than two months ago, many of the movies that…
No one could hope that Rises could ever be as good as The Dark Knight, which is inarguably the best superhero movie ever made. The main problem with Rises is that director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan forced the Rises screenplay to tie up the plot threads of The Dark Knight and Batman Begins…
