The Muppets review

Directed by James BobinWritten by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, based on characters by Jim HensonThe appeal of The Muppet Show is hard to quantify. I'm not talking about the Muppets themselves. It's easy to see why people like them, the cute puppets adored by all ages. But the TV show specifically, the one that…Read More

Melancholia review

Written and directed by Lars von TrierI've said it before and will again: von Trier is a provocateur. That he's from Denmark, my mother's homeland, the most prominent director to emerge from 1995's Dogma movement—a rigorous aesthetic that he's long since shirked—makes his films interesting to me, but I rarely want to see them again.…Read More

10 Great Christopher Walken roles

image by Martin Schoeller Christopher Walken is one of those actors who in his older age is defined by his oddness, by all the people who do impressions of him. Kevin Spacey, Kevin Pollack and Jay Mohr have gotten a lot of mileage on impersonating the guy. Just head over to YouTube if you don't…Read More

I saw Shame

On Monday morning I saw a preview of Steve McQueen's Shame. This is the second film from British auteur McQueen, following his picture Hunger from a couple of years back. Shame is a powerful look at a Manhattan corporate type's sexual compulsion. It's chilly, intense and quite frank in its sexual content, with lots of…Read More

Martha Marcy May Marlene review

Written and directed by Sean DurkinMarcy May (Elizabeth Olsen) is one of many young people working at a farm in what looks like upstate New York. We notice it's a bit weird from the get-go: the women prepare the meals and sit outside the dining room while the men eat first. Then the women get…Read More