Great Movies
MZS
Don't Stop Believing: A Fan's Notes on the Passing of James Gandolfini
A remembrance by a fan of the late James Gandolfini, one of many people who never met him but was touched by his work, and by his presence.
A remembrance by a fan of the late James Gandolfini, one of many people who never met him but was touched by his work, and by his presence.
If you were worried that animation giant Pixar was dipping into the same old wells too often ("Toy Story 3," "Cars 2," et al), the announcement of a prequel to their 2001 hit "Monsters, Inc." might have given you pause. Luckily, the result is more than reassuring. "Monsters University", which pictures Billy Crystal's one-eyed goblin Mike and John Goodman's fuzzy blue scare-master Sully as students attending Scare U, is true to the spirit of the original film, "Monsters, Inc.," and matches its tone. But it never seems content to turn over old ground.
Roger was a tireless advocate for the films he loved. Sometimes that gave a film a little boost. Sometimes his praise saved the day for a film that might have disappeared without him. Here are eight films whose fate was…
The title "Man of Steel" tells you what you're in for when you buy a ticket to this immense summer blockbuster: a radical break from the past. The absence of the word "Superman" tips us off that this new picture is less a standard reboot than a top-to-bottom re-imagining. Whether you approve of the result will depend on what you think Superman is, or should be.
James Gandolfini's quietly magnificent performance as a doomed thief is the only reason to see "Violet & Daisy," a film about two young female assassins (Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan) whose blank-faced sweetness is a cover for their iviolence.
Greetings! My name is Matt Zoller Seitz. I'm the new editor of RogerEbert.com.
"After Earth" is a lovely surprise, a moral tale disguised as a sci-fi blockbuster. This movie from producer-costar Will Smith and director M. Night Shyamalan, about a father and son marooned on a hostile future earth, is no classic, but it’s a special film: spectacular and wise.
"Shadow Dancer," about an IRA partisan recruited as an informant by MI5, creates a powerful mood of unease and sustains it for an hour and forty minutes. And yet for all its formal intelligence, the film is fundamentally unsatisfying. Why?
Less a classic "Star Trek" adventure than a Star Trek-flavored action flick, shot in the frenzied, handheld, cut-cut-cut style that’s become Hollywood’s norm, director J.J. Abrams’ latest could have been titled "The Bourne Federation."
