A quarter of a billion dollars was spent making this movie. A pie chart depicting the allocation of all those millions would have a fat slice labeled “publicity” and a much fatter one labeled “special effects.” The slice for “story and character development,” on the other hand, would be so skinny it wouldn’t have room for a label.... Read more

Suspenseful, glitzy, cutthroat, self-serving — awards season is many things. One thing it rarely is, however, is educational. This year is different. Aspiring filmmakers couldn’t ask for a more instructive lesson in the wrong and right ways to approach a biopic than the examples offered by Amelia and Coco Before Chanel.... Read more

Many reviewers appear confused or at least forgetful in their attempt to place this documentary in its proper historical context. The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt is typical of the memory challenged, writing that This Is It “can be called the first concert rehearsal movie ever.” Um, Kirk, maybe you’ve heard of a little film called Let It Be?... Read more

I remember once reading an article about a technique with which author William Burroughs experimented: He’d scissor a manuscript or magazine story into strips, toss them in the air and piece together a new work reflecting the random pattern in which the scraps had landed. Something tells me that Guillermo Arriaga read that article, too.... Read more

ESPN. Great filmmaking. Not exactly synonymous. At least, not until now. A couple of years ago the sports network’s Bill Simmons had a brainstorm. “I was watching an old HBO Sports documentary,” the columnist recalled recently,” and got mad that HBO had this monopoly ...... Read more

I find it impossible to fathom the critical savaging this film has received. Its Rotten Tomatoes rating barely exceeds Vince Vaughn’s shoe size, and yet, by my count, Couples Retreat delivers on all of its promises. It’s the funniest movie about mating since Knocked Up.... Read more

Imagine you’re a frumpy French house cleaner who stays up all night conjuring hallucinatory paintings of fruits and flowers because your guardian angel instructed you to do so. And that, seemingly by divine intervention, your work is discovered by a prominent art critic who promises to make you rich and famous. Then imagine how betrayed you’d feel if both your patron and your heavenly advisor appeared to have misled you. No Paris exhibition. No adoring crowds. No fancy automobile. It might be enough to drive you mad.... Read more

These days, any slacker with the scratch for a video game can effortlessly morph into a Guitar Hero or even stand in for George Harrison on a Beatles classic. So there’s something exquisitely right about the timing of the fascinating new documentary from Davis (An Inconvenient Truth) Guggenheim. Where his earlier film offered a riveting lesson on the science of climate change, his latest expounds on the musical theories and aesthetic philosophies of three indisputable rock gods.... Read more

Let’s put it this way: With every new project, it becomes more and more difficult to believe that Steven Soderbergh is the same filmmaker who received Oscar nominations for Traffic and Erin Brockovich in a single year. His movies have become increasingly self-indulgent, and he seems to have lost his gift for turning compelling true stories into equally gripping cinema.... Read more

Once upon a time, way back in the 1960s, millions of Americans gathered around the family television each week to watch a program starring ... a dolphin. That, of course, was before the current laws mandating creators of TV to limit production to “CSI”-style forensics crime dramas and talent competitions.... Read more