What does it mean to be truly tested? Perhaps what scares you may be the only way to find out, a familiar theme for filmmakers John Erick and Drew Dowdle, the successful brother act who have delivered an impressive slate of horror pictures including…
Read MoreGreta Gerwig and Lola Kirke Illuminate Friendship Between Women in Screwball Mistress America
The pleasure of meeting Greta Gerwig is all about energy. Her energy, that is. Just sitting casually across from you on a sofa, as she is today with me during a chat at Chicago’s Park Hyatt hotel, the screenwriter and actress radiates a sort…
Read MoreThe exhilaration of Straight Outta Compton, one of the year’s best movies, is that of a good story, well-told with vivid performances and a stirring, contemporary sociopolitical context. Charting the rise, fall and rise of seminal hip hop forerunners N.W.A., director F. Gary Gray…
Read MoreInternational Star Omar Sy on Immigrant Tale Samba, the Call of Hollywood and Finding Humor in Tough Times
The lost art of screen presence has not been lost on France’s biggest star, Omar Sy, the charismatic movie star who won the Cesar for his moving work in 2011’s The Intouchables and returns this month as Samba, a down-on-his-luck, undocumented Senegalese immigrant living…
Read More“I Want to Shock Myself” – Actress Rebecca Ferguson’s Movie Star Mission, Chosen and Accepted
The first thing you notice upon meeting Rebecca Ferguson, the Golden Globe-nominated actress currently starring with Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, is how exquisitely poised she is—perfect hair, eyes, skin, posture and near-melodious greeting. But as soon as I inform her that…
Read MoreSamba, the good-hearted story of a Senegalese immigrant in Paris fighting deportation, is a sum of its parts picture. Written and directed by the French duo Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano from the novel Samba pour la France by Delphine Coulin, it’s a movie…
Read MoreIf any remaining proof of Hollywood’s creative bankruptcy should be required, the more-is-less Terminator: Genisys should put the issue to bed once and for all. An all-out assault on both the senses and storytelling, this overblown mess of a movie appropriates entire chunks of…
Read MoreA good-natured sex farce about the insecure male ego and flirting with marital experimentation, The Overnight is a cheerfully raunchy ode to ennui and swinging that is revolutionary in its own small ways. Light as a feather but no less enjoyable—actually quite enjoyable—this broad…
Read MoreGreat (Adam) Scott: The Overnight Star Takes on Male Ego and Marital Identity in Uproarious Sex Comedy
Adam Scott, the affably winning charmer of the hit series Parks and Recreation, has spent over twenty years in the movie business etching sharp funnymen in pictures like Knocked Up and Step Brothers and compelling everymen in more serious outings like The Secret Life…
Read MoreIn the Beginning, Electronica: Sven Hansen-Løve and Félix de Givry Find, and Exit Eden in Personal Story of a Musical Life
What is the price of sleepwalking through your own life, as years pass, friends move on, other people grow up and plant roots—and you don’t? Filmmaker Mia Hansen-Løve’s Eden is at once an exhilarating illumination of youth culture and a serious examination of a…
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