Director Richard Linklater has been on the independent movie track for over twenty years now, and he’s built an oeuvre that’s as interesting as it is eclectic. He recently abandoned the romantic comedies and plotless, stream-of-consciousness work he’s been known for, turning out instead a pair of cynical flicks—A Scanner Darkly and now Fast Food … Read more
Caleb McEwen is fast on his feet, but we suspect the artistic director of the Brave New Workshop has been running himself ragged as of late. Not only has he been directing plenty of comedy revues, but he and his wife Katy (the workshop’s assistant artistic director) welcomed a bundle of joy into the world … Read more
Seemingly timed for the darkest month of the year, this is a dystopic vision of a world in which the women suddenly become infertile, forcing society to examine—in short order—just what it means to be alive. The youngest human on earth, all of eighteen, is killed, and society’s falling apart at the seams. But when … Read more
Could this be a subtle homage to wartime classics (read: Casablanca and The Third Man) that manages to stand on its own? Or is it a tired, nostalgic retread, the last refuge of an artistically fatigued director? Although it’s been six years since Soderbergh enjoyed a critical hit, word on the street is that he’s … Read more
Almodóvar’s latest film is another feast of color and homage (this time to Frank Capra and Mildred Pierce) and also his first set in the backwater province of La Mancha, where the filmmaker grew up. Penélope Cruz stars as a woman who is—guess what?—pushed to the edge of insanity by her husband’s murder. Turns out … Read more
In 1976, the Maysles brothers followed Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edie around their dilapidated mansion, listening to these cousins of Jackie Kennedy Onassis ramble on about everything from fashion to philosophy to the vermin infesting their home. The resulting footage became Grey Gardens, a film whose status has ballooned from peripheral culthood into … Read more
Touchstone execs are hoping you’ll ignore Mel Gibson’s recent spate of troubles and concentrate instead on his newest fusion of religion and bloodletting. A heartwarming adventure timed to a holiday release, it’s the tale of a young warrior’s quest to save his family … all the while being tortured and mutilated (kind of like Christ). … Read more
Another holiday story comes loping in on its donkey—this one obviously hoping to reap a box-office triumph similar to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ but without that movie’s politics or gore (or big-name director). Shooting in many of the same locales as Passion, The Nativity Story seeks to tell the simple tale of … Read more
Here’s one of those big, fat books that seem designed to either shame you or make you feel daunted, if not entirely stupid. The title is a scold, really, masquerading as a title—is that “Must” truly necessary? And an idiot can do the math: Are you realistically going to find the time to read 1,001 … Read more
It’s been a banner year for what highbrows call sequential art, what with a new volume of the splendid and absolutely sui generis Kramer’s Ergot and Ivan Brunetti’s An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, and True Stories. The biggest revelation of all, though, might be Dan Nadel’s Art Out of Time, a beautifully designed collection … Read more