Early in 2007’s Oscar season, Tony Gilroy – then best known as the writer of all three Jason Bourne movies – made his directorial debut with Michael Clayton, a sober-minded, unexceptional and very well-crafted thriller with pretensions to social commentary about the evils done by corporations in the name of profit; its reward for this […]

“Based on a true story” is such a marvelous bit of hand-waving. In the case of The Bank Job it means, “we are going to try and gloss over some of the more unbelievable elements of our story by making you think it’s all factual.” They needn’t have bothered; true or fake, The Bank Job […]

Ocean’s Thirteen is absolutely not a masterpiece. It’s something far more useful: the first major summer film of 2007 that isn’t a waste of time. Which is ironic, given that it’s essentially just a genial time-waster. As I’ve mentioned several dozen times here and elsewhere, I fully liked 2004’s Ocean’s Twelve. I would come much […]

In 1973, George Roy Hill directed a script by David S. Ward, and a genre was invented. The film was The Sting, and it told the story of two con men leading a coalition to pull off a Long Con on the man who murdered their friend. The great innovation of the film was that […]

I keep coming back to the cinematography. Despite a cache of fine performances and one of the smartest American heist scripts in years, I can’t help but come back to the look of the thing, and how much fun it is – rare indeed is the film whose camera movement is enough to keep me […]