Admit it: Redemption is boring. We think we want characters to “grow” and “change,” but really, it’s the people around us in real life — people who, say, loudly pick their teeth in restaurants, or walk too slowly in public thoroughfares — who need revamping. (We ourselves, of course, need…
Since it opens with a suicide bombing in downtown Tel Aviv, and since its mystery plot involves an attempt to track down a sheik whose public expectorations call for the slaughter of Israeli civilians, The Attack is most avowedly “about” terrorism. But that’s a subject, not the subject. The film,…
The audience for A Band Called Death, the new documentary by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett opening tonight at Texas Theatre, is a self-selected batch. That’s because Death, a group that first cut its demo in Detroit back in 1974, went unknown until that same 45 resurfaced at a…
Surprising proof that Hollywood still can craft a memorable studio comedy, Roland Emmerich’s White House Down stands as a singular achievement in parody, its auteur’s intentions be damned. It’s not just a pitch-perfect attack on every risible plot point afflicting today’s all-exposition-and-explosions filmmaking, it’s also a mad liberal’s vision of…
If you’ve never seen Sandra Bullock blow a peanut shell out of her nose, and you’d like to, The Heat is your movie. That’s not meant sarcastically: It’s one of the highlights of this often dismal but occasionally inspired comedy from Paul Feig, director of Bridesmaids, which pits Bullock’s hoity-toity…
It’s the final installment of the Edgar Wright directed “Blood and Ice Cream” Trilogy, and won’t see wide release until August 23. But the new Alamo Richardson (now set to open on August 9) refuses to wait, so it’s announced an early screening of The World’s End inside the yet-to-be-opened…
The Asian Film Festival of Dallas will usher in its 12 year of programming with an expansion, moving from its old Magnolia digs to the extra spacious Angelika for 2013. Last year’s showcase pulled in huge titles like Ace Attorney, the latest release by Takashi Miike (Ishi the Killer, Audition),…
Things are moving along at the new Richardson branch of Alamo Drafthouse, the Austin-based chain known for simultaneously serving up booze, food and great movies. Construction is in such good shape that the venue says it will open a full week sooner than originally thought, with a new date set…
Terrorizing children in their bedrooms remains the existential concern of the toothy blobs, hams and pom-pom-furred Wild Things that populate Monsters movies, many of whom look like gummy nothings long stuck to the bottom of Pixar’s junk drawer. Their very lives depend upon coaxing night-screams from human kids, a premise…
Destruction is scary, but not half as scary as the act of rebuilding, the moment of looking at the random, jagged pieces you’ve got left and wondering how the hell you’re going to fit them together. In Marc Forster’s World War Z, the world as we know it is destroyed…
Like its gaggle of former anti-nuke environmentalists who’ve now switched sides, Pandora’s Promise takes the form of a traditional liberal pop-doc while proffering a decidedly nonconformist message. The case for nuclear power as the solution to both the planet’s rapidly escalating energy needs and the climate change produced by fossil…
The cat fights, the tears, the perpetuation of silly, useless stereotypes: Reality shows both rot our brains and, in our moments of weakness, bring us fleeting, empty joy. Or something. And since everything is bigger and better in Texas, it’s no surprise that so many have been set in Dallas…
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is a movie event with an actual movie inside, crying to get out. Despite its preposterous self-seriousness, its overblown, CGI’ed-to-death climax and its desperate efforts to depict the destruction of, well, everything on Earth, there’s greatness in this retelling of the origin of Superman, moments…
From the peak of Anchorman to the nadir of Burt Wonderstone, the formula for studio comedies of the last 20 years has been simple: Dude acts like a dick for an hour, turns blandly sweet toward the end and then everyone on the DVD commentary can claim to have made…
Judy Blume’s first novel, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo, was published in 1969, yet it’s only now, 44 years later, that the first big-screen adaptation of her work—Tiger Eyes, based on 1981’s novel of the same name—finally opens in theaters. This is a disgrace. One can…
Last week, EW columnist Mark Harris tweeted a statistic disturbing to anyone who cares about gender equality on the big screen: “It’s now been 61 days since the last wide release of a major studio movie starring a woman.” Unfortunately, that number will only increase—to 84 days—until Sandra Bullock and…
Sometimes, there’s just too damn much to say about a movie than can fit into any one review. (Even Stephanie Zacharek’s exhaustive, excellent one.) So, here’s more: Stephanie Zacharek, our lead film critic, and Film Editor Alan Scherstuhl hashing over all the portentous craziness in Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel…
Superman is an idea. OK, fine. Technically he’s an intellectual property — a set of data points slammed together by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the 1930s, sold for $130 to National Allied Publications (later DC Comics/TimeWarner), and subsequently transformed into a nugget of multivariously exploitable content that has…
As early as Thursday night, comic book fans and blockbuster aficionados will finally have the chance to see Man of Steel, the Zack Snyder-Christopher Nolan take on Superman, the all-American superhero. If you’ve been paying attention to the trailers surfacing periodically on Facebook, Twitter, and in theaters (people still go…
Ask people about their favorite movies and the same titles come up regularly — Casablanca, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall, Citizen Kane. But some movies have special meaning for people even if they don’t turn up on lists of established favorites. They’re the secret movies we keep in our pockets like…
Anyone trying to run a civilized country should know that throwing musicians in jail for making music is always a bad idea. That didn’t stop Vladimir Putin’s government from arresting three members of the punk collective Pussy Riot, after the group stormed the altar of the Cathedral of Christ the…
Fans of punk, DIY, transgressive and avant-garde cinema, brace yourself: Tonight, ancient seals will be blown open as the millimeter offerings of Texas Theatre drop from a trustworthy 35 to 16 and even — wait for it… Super 8. A gambling pool has started regarding what, exactly, will happen when…
