This week, the Dallas Film Society and the Angelika Film Center in Dallas will host a short retrospective of the films of South Korean director Park Chan-wook, starting Tuesday with Oldboy, winner of the Grand Prix award at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. It continues Wednesday with 2006’s Lady Vengeance…
It’s begun. The Dallas International Film Festival is rolling out its selections for this year’s fest, which will consume our minds and eyes from April 4 through April 14. The first 10 films were just announced, and two of them are products of filmmakers who get their mail delivered in…
There’s a reason, beyond basic Judd Apatow oversaturation, that hardly anyone went to see his mewl of middle-aged despair This Is 40. A movie about a marriage already in progress — as opposed to one about a marriage just waiting to happen, the province of the romantic comedy — is…
To paraphrase Stephen Sondheim, there are big, tall, terrible, fleshy, bulbous-headed giants in the sky in Jack the Giant Slayer. And what would a big-budget, mildly revisionist, 3-D spin on “Jack and the Beanstalk” be if those fearsome beasties didn’t somehow make it down to sea level, where a storybook…
Honestly, when it started six years ago, Californication was provocative, ballsy and fun, with laugh-out-loud dialogue and plenty of smart musings about love, sex, family and responsibility. Over five seasons, anti-hero Hank Moody (David Duchovny) has drank and fucked his way through a series of Hollywood writing jobs, all the…
Every Wednesday, we find you five movies for you to check out over the coming week or weekend, from the latest wide release to weird local screenings to timely classics you can watch on your couch. Did we miss something? Let readers know in the comments. Tommy Runs Thursday through…
Lee Pace isn’t a household name, but you may remember him as the star of the terrific but short-lived ABC series Pushing Daisies. He also appeared on the big screen recently, with roles in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and Lincoln. Now it’s being reported that Pace will return to…
Non-golfers may not know much about David Feherty, but he’s worth 30 seconds of your allotted daily Google time. A former tour pro (and Dallas resident), he is now easily golf’s best television analyst, calling the game with honesty and wit and humanity that’s hard to find in any sport…
There have been quite a few detours on this season of Girls: Hannah and Joshua’s two-day brownstone romp, Adam and Ray’s trip to Staten Island last week, Hannah and Elijah’s cocaine-fueled trip around Brooklyn. This episode takes Hannah and Jessa on a train out to Manitou, to see Jessa’s estranged…
Sunday night, Hollywood’s Dolby Theater will see its seats fill with a bevy of A-listers as this year’s Oscars ceremony gets underway. Leading the field this year is Steven Spielberg’s historical drama, Lincoln, which has 12 nominations. Ang Lee’s Life of Pi has just one fewer, while the others all…
If Sundance signals the annual launch of American indie cinema’s new product line, the 63-year-old Berlin Film Festival, in mid-February, offers the year’s first major look at what the rest of the world has to offer. In addition to the 19-film official competition — this year presided over by jury…
There’s scant dialogue but plenty of eloquent storytelling in the five animated short films up for a 2013 Oscar, all of which — along with their live-action and documentary counterparts — will get a pre-award show release at Cinemark 17 on Friday. Save for a five-minute Simpsons segment (“Maggie Simpson…
Depending on your perspective, Zooey Deschanel is either the cutest, funniest, most adorable little retro-kookster on earth, or she’s an irritating try-hard with zero comedy chops. The only thing the world seems able to universally agree on is that Deschanel has nice bangs. As such, her sitcom — New Girl,…
When River Phoenix died in October, 1993, he was three weeks away from completing his performance in Dark Blood, an $8 million indie film that had already done five weeks of shooting on location in southern Utah. In this lurid modern film noir, Phoenix was cast as “Boy,” a mysterious,…
Every Wednesday, we find you five movies for you to check out over the coming week or weekend, from the latest wide release to weird local screenings to timely classics you can watch on your couch. Did we miss something? Let readers know in the comments. When I Rise Screens…
I’ve been frustrated by the latest season of Downton Abbey. It began with the edited out wedding in episode one, was enhanced by too many Edith romance story lines and then the loss of Lady Sybil? Unforgivable. So when the season finale rolled around, I didn’t watch it. Instead, I…
After last week’s singular episode, we’re plopped back into reality this week on Girls. Hannah discovers she’s gotten an E-book deal, but only has one month to write it, and subsequently vomits in front of a gaggle of brunchers. Marnie is still dating Booth Jonathan, unbeknownst to him, and the…
This weekend, the locally made film The Playroom begins a limited run at Oak Cliff’s historic Texas Theatre. Two familiar faces, John Hawkes and Molly Parker, have central roles in the movie as Martin and Donna Cantwell, a couple who share a drunken evening with a pair of friends while…
Your Valentine’s dinner is over you want a nice movie to share with your special someone. You’ve got a bottle of wine to open, a box chocolates to share. You want to relax, but you don’t want to shut your mind off completely. You want something sophisticated, off the beaten…
Does anyone care about John McClane anymore? That’s not the same as asking if you want to see A Good Day to Die Hard, the fifth in this series of films with increasingly outlandish action and increasingly cumbersome titles. The most recent entry — the slick, ridiculous hit, Live Free…
As he’s questioned by a therapist in the opening scene of the film bearing his name, we see Charles Swan III’s subconscious literally spurt out of his head. It’s visualized as an animated collage largely made up of ladies’ long, disembodied legs. It also indicates writer-director Roman Coppola’s approach with…
Abbas Kiarostami is preoccupied with my tape recorder. He wonders if it’s too far away from where he’s sitting. He makes his translator switch from one side of him to another so that the recorder is between them. After a while, clearly still anxious about it, he picks it up…
