The great movie westerns are about honor, dignity, the majesty of the landscape. But they’re also about beautiful men, charismatic, sometimes dangerous-looking demigods like Robert Ryan, James Stewart, Franco Nero, Randolph Scott, and, of course, John Wayne. The Lone Ranger has Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp, the former a long-legged…
Admit it: Redemption is boring. We think we want characters to “grow” and “change,” but really, it’s the people around us in real life — people who, say, loudly pick their teeth in restaurants, or walk too slowly in public thoroughfares — who need revamping. (We ourselves, of course, need…
Title: White House Down How Many Times Have We Seen the White House Destroyed on Film?: If you mean, the royal “we,” then seven: WHD, Superman 2, Mars Attacks!, Earth vs the Flying Saucers, 2012, Independence Day, and Olympus Has Fallen. Rating Using Random Objects Relevant to the Film: Two-and-a…
Crockett and Tubbs, together again? It’s true. Thanks to a partnership between NBCUniversal Television and Lion Forge Comics, Miami Vice is making a comeback. But this time, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas are headed to your iPad, not your television. The classic ’80s hit is one of five vintage…
Elijah Wood is a Maniac.The original Maniac hit theaters in 1980, and quickly became a slasher classic by heralding a new era in on-screen depravity. The grimy, gritty film about a serial killer who scalps women and collects mannequins famously depicted a close-up of a shotgun blast to the head,…
The season eight premiere of Dexter aired on Showtime on June 30 over here in the states, but in the UK, its airing date is set for Sunday, July 7, on FOX. The beginning of the end is certainly a cause for celebration, and there’s no better way to celebrate…
As Burn Notice approaches the end of its final season, its former home is also facing extinction. Yep, it’s ka-boom time for the Coconut Grove Convention Center. exMiami reports that “Miami officials are already processing a demolition permit” for the building, which could be approved within a matter of weeks,…
Considering how much it costs for cable these days , it’s about time the networks started giving us something in return. So rejoice about this Sunday’s Latin-themed shindig at J Riggs Gallery, with free food, free drinks, and free swag — and it’s all on the FX Network. The party…
“The end begins.” Those are the first words you see on the screen, stained with blood spatter — a la Dexter. When the harmless fly lands on Dexter’s arm and you hear a clap, Dex’s familiar morning routine fills the screen. After locking the apartment door and giving that coy…
Ever wonder what it’s like inside the mind of a serial killer? Well, without Dexter’s brilliant voice-over narration, we really wouldn’t know. But take away his story telling, and how can you get to know Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall)? One way of finding out is by looking at his…
With Friday’s release of The Heat (Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy), another buddy cop movie joins a film library filled with explosions, oddball pairings and broad humor. While the genre’s been compacted into a cliche over the years (especially immediately following its heyday in the late ’80s and early ’90s), and…
When Dexter’s seventh season came to an end last December, Deb was having a pretty hard time. She’d found out the truth about her serial killer brother. She struggled with feelings of love toward Dexter that weren’t so brotherly. And she was haunted by her guilt over killing Captain LaGuerta…
At 71, Twenty Feet From Stardom‘s Darlene Love Is Ready for the Big Time
White House Down Is the Best Parody Since Team America
In the Fog Is a Grinding Journey Into the Eastern Front
Because it opens with a suicide bombing in downtown Tel Aviv, and because its mystery plot involves an attempt to track down a sheik whose public expectorations call for the slaughter of Israeli civilians, The Attack is most avowedly “about” terrorism. But that’s a subject, not the subject. The film,…
Dirty Wars Documents How the U.S. Wages War Now
The Writer of Dirty Wars on the Dangers of Covert Ops
Until 2005 or so, no one thought much about modern piracy of the high-seas variety. But then Somali pirates began attacking merchant ships with increasing frequency, seizing vessels and holding their crews hostage for outlandish sums. Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s wiry, neatly crafted thriller A Hijacking wrests fact into the…
Xavier Dolan faces a seemingly insurmountable challenge from the outset of his new picture, Laurence Anyways: How to make a film about the difficulty of transitioning into a transgender life without making that subject seem reductive or abstract? One of the cinema’s ongoing problems of representation, among many others, is…
By 1975, many acts had walked through the doors of Don Davis’s Groovesville Productions offices in Detroit. None of them were quite like this, a band of three related-by-blood African-American brothers who played louder, faster, and weirder than anything anyone in the city that gave birth to Motown had ever…
