The Help: Mean Girls Vs. the Maids

More than just the Hollywood It Girl of the moment, Emma Stone is a real actress, and in The Help, she gets an ostentatious, Oscar-baiting Big Scene in which to prove it. Stone doesn’t need this kind of relic of old-school Hollywood to show off her chops. But this is…

The Future: It’s Bleak and Annoying

Is there such a thing as a sincerely calculated naiveté? Or, put another way: Does Miranda July have any idea of how annoying she is? On the basis of The Future, writer/filmmaker/performance artist July’s second feature, I’d guess that she must. A fabricator of her own screen image, July —…

It’s All in the Delivery

Money-back guarantees feel like such a remnant of the old economy. Does the depressed consumer class even expect companies to make good on their advertised word anymore? But maybe the dream of free slices scammed from over-promising pizza parlors springs eternal. At least that’s the game being run on Jesse…

Before the Drama of TV’s Celeb Rehab, They Once Were Movie Stars

Watching them detox on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab 5 with Dr. Drew, it’s sometimes hard to remember what the twitching, vomiting, weeping, roof-climbing celebrities did before they succumbed to the addictions that landed them on a cable-TV reality show. Some were one-shot wonders, like Amy Fisher, aka the Long Island Lolita,…

Five Most Questionable Dive-In Movie Choices in DFW

The concept of a dive-in movie seems pretty straightforward. You bring the main necessities — swimsuits, floaties, snacks (safely waiting 20 minutes after you eat before entering the water) and a positive mind-set — and the owner of the pool provides a winning flick. Throughout the summer, various water parks…

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Simian Disobedience

The latest descendant of the half-century old de-evolution concept that began with Pierre Boulle’s novel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is an origin story. Predicting an ape-supremacist future, Rupert Wyatt’s film is set in a contemporary America so preoccupied with the Chinese and the coming Singularity that it’s…

The Change-Up Misses the Plate

A uniquely Freudian entry in the body-switching comedy canon, The Change-Up stars Jason Bateman as standard-issue anal-retentive lawyer/family man Dave, and Ryan Reynolds as Dave’s classically anal-expulsive stoner/playboy childhood friend Mitch. When sober, Dave begrudgingly tolerates Mitch’s wild-animal routine. One night, when both are drunk, Dave admits he’s secretly jealous…

Another Earth: Same Crap

There may be nothing as Old Hollywood as the narrative about a pretty girl summoning up a dose of pluck to triumph over adversity. And yet Brit Marling — the lithe, stunning co-writer and star of 2011 Sundance Film Festival hits Another Earth and Sound of My Voice, who gives…

The Scariest Shark You Won’t See During Shark Week

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and though many of you might disagree with that statement because it’s ball-sweat hot (even my metaphorical balls are sweating), it really is the best time of the year because it’s Shark Week. Shark Week! The one week of the year where…

Crazy, Stupid, Love: Not Crazy Enough

In the first scene of Crazy, Stupid, Love, Emily (Julianne Moore) tells Cal (Steve Carell), her high school sweetheart and husband of 20-plus years, that she wants a divorce. She goes on to mention that she had an affair with a co-worker named Dave Lindhagen (Kevin Bacon), at which point…

Beats, Rhymes, & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest

So much petty drama has clouded the release of Michael Rapaport’s A Tribe Called Quest documentary. One version of the back story casts the first-time director as a doofus actor wannabe who persuades the seminal, but privately splintered, hip-hop crew to participate in a consummate career doc. After two and…

On Stage or Streaming: Five Cross-Dressed Must-Sees of the Season

Ditch those stereotypes about girly girls and men’s men and check out what the theater season has to offer in fab cross-dressing, transvestism, drag, travesti and gender bending. These must-sees are either current or future features on Dallas stages — but you can always stream/rent the movie versions. Or see…

Captain America Ignores its Roots for Easy Money

Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics in 1941, Captain America was among the first American comic books intended as an explicit work of patriotic, political propaganda: The cover of the first edition, available months before Pearl Harbor, famously featured the titular costume hero punching out Adolf…

Project Nim

Project Nim, James Marsh’s documentary biopic of the ’70s chimp picked to endure an “experiment” in simian sign language and general neglect, pulls human heartstrings as wrenchingly as any creature feature in nearly half a century. Following brown-eyed beauty Nim, by turns cuddly and ferocious, from an Oklahoma cage to…

Terri

Terri, directed by Azazel Jacobs, concerns an obese 15-year-old, a de facto orphan, living in a ramshackle home with a dispirited, perhaps mentally ill uncle for whom he has to care. Although a near-pariah at school, Terri — played by Jacob Wysocki in an impressive debut — is comfortable with…