Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2005 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Cult Hit for Nobody

  published December 29, 2005

  Nowhere Man (Image Entertainment) There's good reason why you've never heard of this UPN show from the mid-'90s, which... More >>

• The Flunk-Out

  published December 29, 2005

  Buck Henry walks into a studio boss's office and pitches him a movie. Says it's gonna be a sequel to a movie he wrote called The Graduate,... More >>

• The Impossible Bomb

  published December 22, 2005

  Serenity (Universal) Joss Whedon's film version of his TV series Firefly came and went like a lightning bug in... More >>

• Tragedy Re-Revisited

  published December 22, 2005

  Those who will sit around wondering whether Munich is the work of an anti-Israeli or just a self-hating Jew -- which is to say, Steven... More >>

• Love the Sin

  published December 15, 2005

  Sin City: Recut, Extended, Unrated (Buena Vista) Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller's near frame-for-frame adaptation of... More >>

• Monkey Business

  published December 15, 2005

  For whatever reason, the modernized, comic redo of King Kong released exactly 29 years ago has become less the "pop classic" that Pauline... More >>

• Oh, Joy

  published December 15, 2005

  One cannot, in good conscience, describe the countless strands of plot and strains of characters skittering through The Family Stone... More >>

• Sweat Along With Russell

  published December 8, 2005

  Cinderella Man (Universal) Back in the Great Depression, boxing matches only cost a nickel, and the ring was uphill both... More >>

• Blood for Oil

  published December 8, 2005

  Warner Bros. put $50 million into Syriana and allowed writer-director Stephen Gaghan as much time and travel as necessary to research and... More >>

• Jesus Saves

  published December 8, 2005

  Hands down (and hands down her pants, from the sound of it), the funniest bit from the summer's raunch smorgasbord The Aristocrats was... More >>

• Homewreckers on DVD

  published December 1, 2005

  Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox) The pairing of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both in real life and on celluloid, is so obvious as... More >>

• Your Government at Work

  published November 24, 2005

  Punishment Park (New Yorker Video) This 1971 movie from director Peter Watkins could have been made yesterday,... More >>

• Common Cold

  published November 24, 2005

  A few weeks ago, Harold Ramis was sitting in a hotel conference room discussing the subtext of The Ice Harvest, his new film based on the... More >>

• A Family Adrift

  published November 24, 2005

  Writer and director Noah Baumbach has made three light films -- one so slight (1997's party-hopping Highball), it didn't see release 'til... More >>

• A Very Long Run

  published November 17, 2005

  Born to Run: 30th Anniversary (Columbia Home Video) The centerpiece of this three-disc boxed set isn't the classic 1975... More >>

• Cash Cropper

  published November 17, 2005

  It seems like so much nitpicking, but why is the Johnny Cash biopic called Walk the Line when a far better name would have been Ring of... More >>

• Blessed Are the Buttmunches

  published November 10, 2005

  Beavis and Butt-head: The Mike Judge Collection, Volume One (Paramount) This three-disc, 40-episode volume chronicling... More >>

• Love at First Fight

  published November 10, 2005

  Keira Knightley, who is all of 20 but has the grace and gravitas of someone a good decade older, probably considers herself the luckiest lass in... More >>

• The Force Runs Its Course

  published November 3, 2005

  Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (Lucasfilm Ltd.) The final installment of the Star Wars saga actually... More >>

• Killing Time

  published November 3, 2005

  If Jarhead, director Sam Mendes and writer William Broyles Jr.'s adaptation of Anthony Swofford's 2003 Gulf War memoir, seems at all... More >>

• Cameron Crowing

  published October 27, 2005

  Titanic: Special Collector's Edition (Paramount Home Video) Loved and loathed in equal measure, Titanic... More >>

• Scattered Dour

  published October 27, 2005

  The Weather Man, starring Nicolas Cage as a disappointment of a son and a failure of a father, was screened for critics in the spring,... More >>

• Writes and Wrongs

  published October 27, 2005

  This fall, the roll call of gigantic ghosts inhabiting cinematic biographies continues unabated, with Joaquin Phoenix as a shrunken Johnny Cash in... More >>

• Past Prime

  published October 27, 2005

  With a name like Prime, a movie had better be about something more than an older woman digging on a younger man, much to the disapproval of... More >>

• Cape of Good Hope

  published October 20, 2005

  Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology 1989-1997 (Warner Home Video) There's good reason to be skeptical of an eight-disc... More >>