Considering Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Seyfried probably has the least flashy of the four major roles in While We’re Young, but she does well with it anyway as...
Considering Taraji P. Henson
Like many of you, I just got through the season finale of Empire after enough stuff happened in the first 12 episodes to make...
An Incomplete History of Cinderella at the Movies
I mentioned in my review of the new Cinderella that the story had been told many times before, modernized, tweaked, and otherwise adulterated in...
Mike Leigh and His Stars
Who is Mike Leigh? You might answer, “A British filmmaker who has been making films since the 1980s, a few of them period pieces,...
Considering Chuck Jones
I wore my Bugs Bunny tie to the press preview of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History’s Chuck Jones exhibit, and I...
Random Observations on Fifty Shades of Grey
So I finally saw Fifty Shades of Grey. It was less terrible than I feared, but still fell well short of being good. Let’s...
A Marvel Experience … for the Kiddos
Waiting to enter the first dome –– of The Marvel Experience’s total of seven –– may make you feel as if you’re about to...
The Best Documentaries of 2014
Just like last year, I’m putting this list out at an opportune time. My top documentary of the year (and one of my best...
The Best Lead Performances of 2014
In contrast to my list of best supporting actors this past year, my list of best lead actors is so overwhelmingly male that it’s...
The Kimbell Screens “The Red Shoes”
It’s not exaggerating to say that Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s garishly colorful 1948 melodrama The Red Shoes is one of the most influential...