Bel Powley Amazes in “The Diary of a Teenage Girl”
There are about a million or so ways Marielle Heller’s “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” could’ve flown clear off the rails. While leaving the screening room, I ran into […]
Category Archives: New Releases
The Storm Clouds Broke
“No bags allowed,” said the theater attendant. Initially, I was shocked. I had carried my laptop bag with me to film screenings for the last several years, but today was […]
Stephen Cone, Cole Doman, Nina Ganet, Pat Healy and Elizabeth Laidlaw on “Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party”
“Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party,” the seventh feature from director Stephen Cone, is a masterpiece of nuance. It assembles a large cast of characters, observes their behavior as they interact during […]
Cheer Up Charlize: Eight Essential Roles
Few performers in modern cinema have managed to reinvent themselves with as much spectacular success as Charlize Theron. Her various transformations over the last two decades have been astonishing to […]
Jeffrey Westhoff on “The Boy Who Knew Too Much”
There were three film critics whose work I read on a weekly basis while growing up in Northern Illinois: Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times, Michael Wilmington at the Chicago […]
Why The Latest “Star Wars” Trailer Gives Me New Hope
Like most “Star Wars” fans who grew up with the original trilogy, I have felt a great deal of skepticism regarding the new Disney-produced film. In an article I wrote […]
Frank Mosley on “Her Wilderness”
Frank Mosley’s entrancing hour-long picture, “Her Wilderness,” is a cinematic meditation comprised of fragmented narrative threads. A young blonde woman (Lauren McCune) teeters on the edge of self-destruction. A pregnant […]
Reflections of Synthetic Skin
On April 17th of last year, I posted a piece entitled “Under Her Skin” that compared the heroines of Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” and Spike Jonze’s “Her.” One was […]
Of Mice and Women: The Strange Unraveling of Cinderella
As a counterpoint to my recent article on “Cinderella,” I’m pleased to present the following essay by my cherished colleague, Rob Walker of ChannelAwesome.com. In a key scene in Kenneth […]
“Life Just Is” Is Just Lovely
Alex Barrett’s “Life Just Is” navigates its way through the sort of miniature epiphanies that commonly occur during the rather nerve-racking decade comprising one’s twenties. These small realizations may not add […]
