At the end of an interview with writer Sarah Nicole Prickett in June of last year, screenwriter and HBO “Newsroom” showrunner Aaron Sorkin cracked. Rising from his seat, he told Prickett (who was on assignment for the nearly 160-year-old Toronto-based Globe and Mail): “Listen here, Internet girl … It wouldn’t Read More…
2013 is the year of the superhero. With so many spandex-clad hunks flying through the silver-screen skies, it would be easy for Jeff Wadlow’s follow-up to the 2010 action-comedy “Kick-Ass” to get lost in the crowd. What “Kick-Ass 2” lacks in shiny hair and noble origin stories, however, it makes Read More…
“Women in television” — and, particularly, the “Can women be funny?” question — is a very tired conversation now. It’s been done and dissected, and now, it should be put in the kitchen, where it can keep silent and make me sandwiches. And yet it keeps cropping up because, joking Read More…
Like a lot of porn, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s “Lovelace” is anticlimactic, aimless and extremely unsexy. The film follows the young Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried), better known as “Linda Lovelace,” who left her repressive Catholic parents (played by Robert Patrick and Sharon Stone, unrecognizable in an excellent yet entirely Read More…
The last time we saw Neill Blomkamp, he was fresh off the success of “District 9,” the 2009 summer sleeper hit that combined slick visuals and action with biting social commentary. Four years ago seems like an awfully long time. “Elysium” is a good movie the same way “Twilight” is Read More…
The film opens with high school senior Sutter Keely (Miles Teller) sitting at his computer, typing a response to a college essay prompt that asks him to describe a hardship. He takes a sip of a beer. He begins to ramble on about the downward spiral resulting from his recent Read More…
From classics like “Singin’ in the Rain” to goofball comedies like “Tropic Thunder,” movies about movies are embedded with a unique type of charm. When filmmakers invite audiences into their own worlds, the result is often insightful, realistic and pleasingly self-aware. American director Joshua Oppenheimer puts a sinister twist on Read More…
On the evening of May 11, 1960, a man walked off a bus in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was immediately captured, drugged and flown to Israel, where he would be tried for 15 criminal charges, including crimes against humanity. The man was Adolf Eichmann — a former Nazi SS lieutenant Read More…
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, an annual event seeking to promote “awareness, appreciation and pride in the diversity of the Jewish people,” kicked off this past week with a variety of showings across the Bay, including the July 27 screening of Alex Karpovsky’s “Red Flag” at San Francisco’s Castro Read More…
There’s usually a certain pattern in bad comedy sets — some muffled laughter and pity claps in the beginning to inspire confidence, but when the cliched jokes and dull punchlines start to pile up, the audience only stays to watch the set’s inevitable demise. “R.I.P.D.,” like an unfunny standup comedian, Read More…