Steve Carrell is a sweet, shy middle-aged geek and the last American virgin in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), the feature debut of director Judd Apatow (who wrote the film with Carrell), an oddly sweet mix of romantic comedy and adolescent shenanigans, albeit with a slightly older cast. When he’s pulled out of the stock room […]
Into the Wild (2007), Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book, is a bracing cinematic plunge into the odyssey of Christopher McCandless. The real-life young man fled a middle-class life of what he perceived to be the compromises and corruptions of the material world to embark on an “Alaskan Adventure,” a quest of self-reliance […]
The Stepford Wives meets Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in Get Out (2017), the directorial debut of writer / comedian Jordan Peele, a tricky and successful mix of social satire, modern horror, and savvy commentary on race as experienced by a person of color in a largely white society. Daniel Kaluuya stars as Chris Washington, […]
Capote (2005) – Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his astounding screen incarnation of real life author and New York intelligentsia celebrity Truman Capote as he researched and wrote his masterpiece “In Cold Blood,” his poetic reportage on the shocking murder of a smalltown Kansas family and the killers he […]
HBO has just given streamers another reason to subscribe to HBO Now. Show Me a Hero, a six-hour miniseries developed by David Simon (The Wire) and William F. Zorzi from the non-fiction book by Lisa Belkin and directed by Paul Haggis (with a subtlety and nuance I didn’t know he had in him), stars Oscar […]
