Jurassic World Capably Stomps, Roars and Awes

In Jurassic World, Colin Trevorrow’s Jurassic Park reboot — set 22 years after dinosaurs started walking the Earth, again — brontosauruses, stegosauruses and velociraptors have become old hat, sort of like the mechanical Abe Lincoln at Disneyland. Meanwhile, the habitat around them has gone Vegas: Isla Nublar, home of the…

Where to See Free Movies This Summer

There will be days this summer when you want to blow your brains out. The kids are going to whine about being bored every few minutes; the temperature will hover in the low 300-degree range, and the biggest movie of the summer will most likely be Mission Impossible 32 with…

Cusack Breaks Free (as a Beach Boy)

When John Cusack was launching his career in the ’80s, Brian Wilson had gone from rock star to living lore — a brilliant Bigfoot. “People would have Brian Wilson encounters,” says Cusack, who plays Wilson in the new biopic Love & Mercy. “In L.A., people would say, ‘Oh, I was…

Five Reasons iZombie Is Summer’s Most Underrated Show

iZombie is about as sunny and optimistic as the zombie genre gets, which of course isn’t all that much. Even by supernatural standards, it’s a bloodthirsty canon, demanding regular sacrifices of innocents and grisly feats of skull splitting and cerebellum cannibalizing. The CW’s Seattle neo-noir boasts plenty of both to…

I’ll See You in My Dreams Is a Catch

As a middle-aged woman, I rarely have a conversation with other middle-aged women in which the subject of movies “for us” fails to come up. As a critic, I don’t really think of movies in terms of which ones are “for” me and which are not, but I know what…

Studio Ghibli’s Marnie Is a Joyous-Glum Drama

“I hate myself.” That’s an unusual statement coming from the hero of an animated film, let alone in the first two minutes. But 12-year-old orphan Anna (Sara Takatsuki), the protagonist of Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s lovely anime When Marnie Was There, has no illusions about her place in the world: There’s an…

In Spy, McCarthy Triumphs for Susans Everywhere

The Melissa McCarthy of Spy is different from the one who rose to prominence by shitting in a sink. Bridesmaids scored her an Oscar nomination, and for the ceremony McCarthy donned a glamorous rose gown with a diamond collar and belt. But in the years since, Hollywood continued to see…

In Love & Mercy Brian Wilson Turns Pain Into Sound

What does the world sound like when you’re Brian Wilson? When you’ve made a record that sounds like cirrus clouds look — as Wilson did with the Beach Boys’ small modern miracle of harmony, the 1966 Pet Sounds — all bets are off when it comes to the way ordinary…

Entourage, Doing What Bros Do

The first line in Entourage is a good indication of what the next 104 minutes will bring. Peering through a pair of binoculars while a speedboat carries him toward a yacht in the dazzling waters of Ibiza, Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon), the big brother of megastar Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier),…

Fort Worth Filmmaker Makes a Movie, Gets Major Distribution

In this industry, I meet a lot of people who talk a lot of shit. “This industry” meaning the film industry. Most heard: “Love your idea, let’s get together and talk about it,” “Send me your script and I’ll pass it to the right people,” “I’d love to be a…

Are You Tough Enough to Be an American Ninja Warrior?

Everything looks so much easier on TV. Baldness is cured with the simple spray of a can. A methamphetamine empire can be built in an RV with school supplies. A sponge can live in a pineapple under the sea without being contaminated by off-shore drilling.  American Ninja Warrior, the NBC…

10 Reasons to See Grey Gardens at Texas Theatre

Little Edie and Big Edie were related to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale were the aunt and first cousin of the former first lady. Grey Gardens, the Long Island home of the Beales, was almost shutdown by the health department…

How Amy Schumer Became This Generation’s Latest Truth-Teller

During “Compliments,” a first-season sketch on Inside Amy Schumer, a group of female friends respond to every bit of praise with a verbal self-maiming: “I tried to look like Kate Hudson but ended up looking like a golden retriever’s dingleberry,” says one. Sighs another, “Of course I see everyone when…

5 Attractions Six Flags Should Turn into Movies

Disney has a genius way of turning large sums of money into even larger sums of money. The executives at Disney probably laugh at the size of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin for being small and unsightly as they back stroke through one the size of a college football stadium. With…

Don’t Hate Tomorrowland for Asking Us to Be Better

In a junk-food summer, Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland is a defiant carrot stick, a blockbuster adventure flick where the message is “Think smart.” It’s a deliberate phooey to the kiddie carnage of movies like Transformers and The Avengers, which frighten children about the apocalypse before they can even spell the word…