Ed Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Zach Galifianakis are back. Fans of the trio (a.k.a. The Wolfpack) will find it hitting the road and theaters this weekend in The Hangover Part III. And, if the movie’s poster is any indication, then all bets are off. See also: Lens Flares and the…
The unlikeliest of all the Hangover trilogy’s comic implausibilities might be its four pampered, rich-boy leads unironically calling themselves the “Wolf Pack” without anybody ever making fun of them. In the slobs-versus-snobs comedies of the 1970s and ’80s, the snooty rich kids were always the antagonists, bullying the nerds and…
There’s one key truth that separates the tank-topped gearheads of the Fast and Furious movies from the rest of us. Every problem these lugnuts face can be solved by doing the one thing these lugnuts love most: driving really fast. It’s what it would be like if you could deal…
New York is a cruel and beautiful place, just as 27 is a cruel and beautiful age. In Frances Ha, Greta Gerwig plays a woman who’s feeling the weight of both. Frances is an aspiring dancer who has reached the age when “aspiring” really means not cutting it. Life with…
Expectations here in Cannes were high — or at least semi-high — for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives, in which Kristin Scott Thomas and Ryan Gosling play a mother-son duo with what might politely be called unresolved issues. Gosling’s Julian has always played second fiddle to his older brother,…
You know those two little lines you get in your forehead when you frown? The ones that, if you frown too much, stick there for good? The French have a name for that: “the lion wrinkle.” And by the 10th day of Cannes, there are a lot of lion wrinkles…
Ladies and gentlemen — anyone, really, who cares about his or her mug — step right up. According to a bit of advice proffered in one of the festival editions of The Hollywood Reporter a few days back, the beauty product to buy while in Cannes is Avibon, an “only-in-France…
Justin Lin may strike some as out of place in the pantheon of contemporary auteurs. The Taiwanese-born American filmmaker, best known for having directed Fast Five and its sequel, Fast & Furious 6 makes unabashedly populist blockbusters for mainstream audiences — hardly the purview of a “serious” artist. His films,…
I. First, Something About the Badges (Then We’ll Get to the Coens) Someday I’m going to write a song and call it “Ballad of the Blue Badge.” I haven’t figured out a rhyme scheme yet, let alone a melody, so please allow this outline to suffice: At Cannes, the color…
In Arnaud Desplechin’s English-language Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Benicio Del Toro — freed at last from the tyranny of playing bit-part heavies in American thrillers and action movies — is James Picard, a Blackfoot Indian who has lost his way in post-World War II America. He’s a…
Nerd alert. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness opens today, and, at risk of revealing just how deep our love of the Enterprise and its crew goes, suffice it to say we’ve been re-watching Star Trek: The Animated Series (which, by the way, is great and on Netflix Instant Watch)…
It’s that thing where we are really, really bummed about Bill Hader leaving Saturday Night Live. This Saturday, May 18, the final SNL episode featuring Hader as a cast member will air on NBC. Hader has plans to move to Los Angeles with his family and continue making movies. (His…
“Who are you?” pleads a doomed man as Benedict Cumberbatch looms into his first close-up in Star Trek Into Darkness. The answer is Khan. And that’s not a spoiler — it’s a selling point. A less secretive director (i.e., all save the ghost of Stanley Kubrick) would trumpet that his…
Young people are lovely in ways they can’t comprehend until years later. Yesterday’s haircut straight out of Scooby-Doo becomes tomorrow’s despondent comb-over. With the advent of varicose veins, the pale, dimpled legs you once hated now seem in memory not so far off from the lily stems of Botticelli’s Venus…
Daniel Mindel, A.S.C., is part of an ever-shrinking population: cinematographers who have yet to shoot a feature digitally. He acknowledges that he “will be forced” to do it eventually by “the corporate entities that drive our industry,” but he believes “there is no need to use an inferior technology at…
One of the most exciting things about attending the Cannes Film Festival is being among the first people to see the films the world will be talking about. That’s one of the terrible things, too: There’s no one to warn you when you’re about to see a puppy murder, a…
The biggest puzzlement of these early days of the festival comes from Sofia Coppola, one of my favorite working directors. Until now, I have loved every one of Coppola’s movies: I love her sure and delicate touch, and she’s better than any other contemporary filmmaker at capturing the greatness of…
François Ozon’s Young & Beautiful, a portrait of a 17-year-old French call girl, is something else again. This is another story about a family in crisis: Isabelle (played by Marine Vacth, a stunning-looking if ultimately inert actress) is a student who still lives at home with her mother, stepfather, and…
Nearly everyone I know who has seen the official poster for the 66th Cannes Film Festival — a bird’s-eye view of a kiss between a young Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward — has been crazy about it. The couple’s lips meet in the center of a perfect sunburst. She’s two…
Chambers of Fear owner Paul Boyd tends to get a little excited when describing everything that his company will be featuring at Phoenix Comicon this year. It’s only natural, considering that the local haunted house’s booth at the event will be twice as big as last year’s and will sport…
Those eager for clues as to what goes down in the long-awaited fourth season of Arrested Development got a few when Netflix released a trailer for the upcoming Bluth family installment, which drops in its entirety Sunday, May 26, on Instant Watch. One scene in particular caught our eye: Michael…
Grab a sweater and stock up on your snacks of choice — here are five movies worth heading to the theater to see this month. The Great Gatsby Though it’s garnered mixed early reviews, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby will be one thing for sure: visually stunning. The…
