Under the Skin is that rarest, most satisfying breed of art film – a work whose images start dissonant, impenetrable even, yet whose grasp on narrative, tone and theme only tightens and reveals...
Marvel's The Avengers may, with time, come to be regarded as one of the most influential movies of the new century. Seriously. A perfectly upbeat, rollicking piece of entertainment in its own right,...
There are few filmmakers as fun to analyze and pick apart as Darren Aronofsky, yet by the same token there's few genres less fun to examine than Biblical movies.
Aronofsky is something of a god to cinephiles...
Arguably 2013's biggest breakout rapper took Hill Auditorium by storm last Saturday, and it was a show that provoked fairly passionate reactions, for better and for worse.
The 20-year old Chicago native...
Few men have had as pronounced an effect on popular music as Pharrell Williams, yet by the same token one must take note of how little material he's actually released to his own name. Consider, however,...
There's few reasons not to be skeptical about The Lego Movie. When one thinks about shamefully corporate filmmaking, projects based on games tend to inspire the most ire -- think Battleship, think Transformers:...
All of the great movie stars have some degree of ambiguity about them -- in some cases a darker aspect of personality, and in others perhaps an unspoken sadness. What has made George Clooney one of...
A preliminary note: As an amateur cultural critic whose assignments and intake are totally self-imposed, everything that I consume is of my choice. This means that I'm both spared quite a bit of what I...
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues occupies a bizarre place in pop culture -- even more so than the famously wacky collaborations of its director and star. The duo of Adam McKay and Will...
There’s few comeback stories in Hollywood that are based on genuine artistic merit — too often, they move on some sort of apologist compensation than on the actual quality of the new work. The revitalization...
If there is a common thematic thread to be found in the films of 2013, or at least the ones I've bothered to consume, it's one of excess. Of pushing limits. Of pushing one's moral and physical boundaries...
Skillful and engaging though last year’s young-adult novel adaptation The Hunger Games may have been, it still felt like a film much more interested in pleasing its youthful, intensely ravenous fanbase...
