The Hangover Part III
Better than “The Hangover Part II,” but equally as useless, “The Hangover Part III” plays more like a caper film than an outright comedy. The…
Better than “The Hangover Part II,” but equally as useless, “The Hangover Part III” plays more like a caper film than an outright comedy. The…
The latest from Blue Sky Studio ("Ice Age," "Rio") is different from whatever Pixar/Disney or any other big animation outfit happens to be offering this…
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
Patrice Leconte's "Monsieur Hire" is a tragedy about loneliness and erotomania, told about two solitary people who have nothing else in common. It involves a…
Jerry Lewis returns to Cannes in a starring role in Daniel Noah's "Max Rose," which proves once again — as "The King of Comedy" did…
Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" brings black and white, to the competition, while "Omar" delivers moral shades of gray to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and "Michael Koolhaas" looks…
Roger was a titan in the film community, but he was also a beacon for the seriously disabled.
Mother’s Day I awakened to spirited calls from my children and grandchildren. As Roger wrote in his memoir, “Life Itself,” I came from a large family of nine, and I had four brothers and four…
Roger was a titan in the film community, but he was also a beacon for the seriously disabled.
Ray Harryhausen told us, time and again, the story of how he saw the original "King Kong" (1933) on the big screen when he was…
The destruction of Vulcan, one of the most crucial planets in the "Star Trek" universe, should be at the core of J.J. Abrams’ "Trek" movies.…
Dear Roger,You emailed me the questions to this interview on March 15, 2013. In your March 16th reply to my email, you said: The piece…

Barry Levinson's "The Bay" is another found-footage shocker, but with a welcome difference. Instead of being cobbled together from shaky-cam footage allegedly shot by clueless teenagers whose video shows lots of their own shoes, this one is built around suppressed video allegedly filmed by a professional cameraman for public access TV.
It also incorporates cell phone video, Skype interviews and video shot on board a boat by a young couple who have chosen the wrong day to take their baby out for a cruise. The theory is that all this material has been kept secret in a cover-up of the pollution of Chesapeake Bay (which in fact is heavily polluted, but never mind).
As the film opens, a young TV journalist named Donna Thompson (Kether Donohue) recalls a terrible July 4th a few years earlier when a waterborne parasite began to attack swimmers and other local residents. Identified as isopods, the creatures have mutated into carnivores the size of big cockroaches and begin to devour their victims both from the outside in and the inside out — a nice touch, that.
The reasons for the mutation are hinted: run-off from a giant chicken farm, where the poultry feed is laced with steroids, and a possible radiation leak from a nearby nuclear reactor. It goes without saying that the local mayor (Frank Deal) denies any problem, having learned from "Jaws" that it is better for people to die than for tourism to be affected.
Local doctors and police try desperately to call for help, but find it difficult to get a response on a busy holiday. Contacts between an emergency room doctor and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta are well done, and not reassuring.
Although there are some scary moments here, and a lot of gruesome ones, this isn't a horror film so much as a faux eco-documentary. Levinson, a major director ("Rain Man," "Wag the Dog") seems more interested in spreading a green message than terrifying viewers. Nothing wrong with that, but audiences lured in by the trailers may be disappointed. At least the film is watchable and audible, something you can't say for most found-footage films, including great stretches of the "Paranormal Activity" series, which is turning into a parasite of its own.
Saturday, May 4, was one month to the day that Roger left this earthly plane. In honor of Kentucky Derby weekend I ...
Michał Oleszczyk
When Chaz has gone to Cannes without Roger in the past, she has written about the festival n the form of letters and ...
View image A graffito on Norah Jones. It's confession time again here at Scanners: I've never go...