If you work in media, you likely know someone like B.J. Novak’s Ben Manalowitz — someone hell-bent on finding a big idea that will propel them to fame and fortune, with or without any actual profundity. Novak has played this semi-punchable character more than once, and in Vengeance, his feature film directorial debut, leans hard into it with a wink. We’ve also seen a few spins on skewering podcasters, especially […]

It still feels, as I groused last month, that the excitement of The Movies Are Back! has somewhat deflated in the face of a summer blockbuster season that has largely consisted thus far of Top Gun: Maverick and “the other ones”. But at least there will be more movies in July than in June, and one of those has every reason to be at least big enough – financially, at […]

There’s a very real danger of applying a most peculiar kind of grading curve to Saving Mr. Banks. It’s a movie produced by Walt Disney Pictures, with Walt Disney as an actual character, and it presents him as more of a human being with good and bad characteristics than a plaster saint? He’s seen stubbing out a cigarette? He says “damn”? WHAT A BRAVE AND UNPRECEDENTED MOTION PICTURE THIS BE. […]

Luc Besson is usually a pretty decent box office draw amongst the art house crowd in this country, which leaves me wondering why it took a year and a half for us to get Angel-A, purportedly his final live-action movie (which I’ll believe when he’s dead, and not a moment sooner), during which time the animation hybrid Arthur and the Invisibles (purportedly his final movie overall) managed to shoot in […]

At this point in history, it seems that there are two kinds of movies about September 11, 2001: -The first kind pokes us in the eyes and shakes us back and forth and slaps us on the face screaming “ZOMG NINELEVEN NINELVEN!” over and over again. This is the United 93 9/11 Film. -The second kind says, “hey…9/11…” and proceeds to be unbearably schmaltzy, a movie-of-the-week kind of product that […]