Movie Reviews and Previews Johnny Depp is too exhausting to sustain interest in Black Mass The downside of Johnny Depp always doing weird voices and wearing elaborate makeup for his film roles is that it has killed the magic of his performances. I LOVED Johnny Depp for years and years—he was one of my favorites when I started writing for this site—but he By Sarah • Jul 31, 2015 10:16 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Kristen Stewart before Ultra Kristen Stewart’s new movie, American Ultra, opens in a few weeks, which means she will shortly be hitting the road to promote it—with Jesse Eisenberg. If ever there was a press tour with a high probability of going off the rails, it’s this one. (“Finally! Someone else’ By Sarah • Jul 30, 2015 01:00 pm
Christina Applegate A Chris Hemsworth/Will Ferrell comparison in Vacation There are seven movies in the Vacation franchise—can you name them all?—and only two of them are any good: National Lampoon’s Vacation, and Christmas Vacation. John Hughes wrote both (and he co-wrote European Vacation), and the first Vacation movie—the best of the bunch—was directed by By Sarah • Jul 30, 2015 11:45 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Spotlight at the top We must be approaching award season because the fall festivals have announced their lineups, led by TIFF, and now we’re starting to get trailers for the Oscar baity movies we’ll be watching in the fall. There’s a lot of good-looking stuff coming up, but the one film By Sarah • Jul 29, 2015 04:03 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Woody Allen made the same movie again Woody Allen makes basically two movies: Annie Hall, and Crimes and Misdemeanors. When he’s on his game, you get, well, Annie Hall and Crimes and Misdemeanors. When he’s not, you get Magic in the Moonlight and The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. His latest movie—his forty-fifth, which By Sarah • Jul 29, 2015 01:08 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Seth Rogen’s other f*ck-off holiday movie Last holiday season’s movie talk was dominated by The Interview, the Seth Rogen movie that may or may not have prompted the Sony Hack. Sony famously dumped The Interview’s release, fearing further action from the hackers—they were already on their knees, it wasn’t an unreasonable thought— By Sarah • Jul 28, 2015 04:10 pm
TV Updates Jon Stewart’s long goodbye As Jon Stewart winds down his reign as the host of The Daily Show, which over his sixteen years on the air he’s turned into a late-night institution, Comedy Central has been putting together videos memorializing different aspects of his time on the show, like this one marking the By Sarah • Jul 28, 2015 01:32 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Stan Lee: Michael B. Jordan can be Johnny Storm but not Peter Parker With the Fantastic Four reboot just over a week away, Michael B. Jordan’s casting as Johnny Storm, traditionally white in the comic books and originally played in movies by Chris Evans, remains controversial. I can’t believe the number of people who have expressed some version of “but how By Sarah • Jul 28, 2015 11:54 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Ezra Miller and Michael Angarano in The Stanford Prison Experiment Based on the notorious 1971 study in which a group of Stanford students pretending to be prisoners and prison guards descended into psychological abuse and brutality after barely a day, The Stanford Prison Experiment is an impressive but maybe too literal reconstruction of those events. Dr. Philip Zimbardo randomly divided By Sarah • Jul 27, 2015 02:11 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Love yourself enough to not see Pixels It would be so easy to lambast Pixels as a cravenly lazy, creatively defunct, possible Ponzi scheme in which audience dollars are siphoned into Adam Sandler’s private jet fund. I would remind you that working on Sandler movies is a soul-destroying experience for Sony staffers, then make a joke By Sarah • Jul 27, 2015 12:23 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Chris Evans: Before We Go Maybe because the last non-Marvel Chris Evans movie I saw was Playing It Cool, a movie so infuriatingly bad I wanted to throw my television into a volcano after seeing it, but I found myself not hating Evans’ directorial debut, Before We Go. A small, modest film about a couple By Sarah • Jul 24, 2015 04:08 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews The Revenant is basically Tropic Thunder The Hollywood Reporter has a feature with director Alejandro Inarritu, still working on The Revenant, which is basically just giving the guy a microphone to clear up those pesky rumors that his production is “troubled”, plagued by a hellish location shoot, budget overages, and scheduling woes. At least Inarritu doesn’ By Sarah • Jul 23, 2015 02:28 pm
TV Updates Drop Dead Murder Kirsten Dunst has never been my favorite, but Drop Dead Gorgeous is one of my all-time favorite movies. I bring this up because Dunst stars in season two of FX’s crime anthology, Fargo, and hearing her Minnesota accent is giving me fond Drop Dead Gorgeous memories. That movie is By Sarah • Jul 22, 2015 01:28 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Gorgeous, Grim Bond There’s a new trailer for the latest Bond movie, Spectre, and we finally get a clear look at some of the new characters in play, including Dave Bautista as Mr. Hinx, Monica Bellucci and Lea Seydoux as the femme fatales, and Christoph Waltz as Totally Not Blofeld. Officially Waltz’ By Sarah • Jul 22, 2015 12:39 pm
Trevor Noah Trevor Noah is making good After Trevor Noah was appointed Jon Stewart’s successor on The Daily Show, there was some backlash during which everyone got mad about old (bad) jokes on Twitter. People knew nothing about Noah so they went looking to understand the guy who was just handed the keys to the kingdom, By Sarah • Jul 21, 2015 03:23 pm
Equality Issues Amy Schumer’s brutal honesty is why she’s great We’ve seen the Star Wars-themed photoshoot already, and now GQ has released their cover profile of Amy Schumer for their comedy issue. They call her the “funniest, gutsiest comedian in America”, and the interview certainly backs up the gutsy claim. Interviewed while preparing for an HBO stand-up special, Schumer By Sarah • Jul 21, 2015 12:56 pm
