Articles tagged "jeffrey wright"

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

The New Classics - The 30 Best Films of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[16.Jan.09] :. Unlike previous years, where classics came crawling out of the celluloid woodwork with regular reckless abandon, 2008 was more calm… and considered. That's not to say that choosing 30 top titles was hard. The difficulty in placing them in some manner of rank order suggests the actual depth of quality involved.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

OMG - The 20 Worst Films of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[15.Jan.09] :. There's bad, and then there's 2008 level bad. You know this list is looking down into a deep dark bottomless pit of cinematic despair when Mike Myers' shameful Love Guru didn't even make the Top 20!

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

Iconic - The Top 20 Male Performances of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[14.Jan.09] :. Like the gladiators of old, 2008 resembles a battle of formidable acting gods, especially when looking over the 20 choices presented below. Indeed, if anything, choosing a winner requires more of a leap of faith than any amount of critical skill - they all were that good.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008 Feature

Tough and Tender - The Top 20 Female Performances of 2008

by PopMatters Staff

[14.Jan.09] :. Twenty talented ladies, 20 performances worthy of multiple little gold men. Unfortunately, as in all years, someone has to come out on top. But after looking over this impressive list, picking the preeminent turn of 2008 seems almost impossible.

PopMatters Picks: The Best TV, Film, and DVD of 2008

Film Review

Cadillac Records

by Cynthia Fuchs

[5.Dec.08] :. In the ambitious and cluttered Cadillac Records, Leonard Chess redistributes income among his artists, but the point is not lost on any of them that he decides who plays when and even how to play.

Recent Film reviews

Column: The Screener

Cut to the Whatever

by Chris Barsanti

[21.Nov.08] :. Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace slices away nearly every element of the old Bond, and leaves nothing in its place.

Recent columns

Quantum of Solace

by Cynthia Fuchs

[14.Nov.08] :. Bond (Daniel Craig) seems done in by the notion that M is indeed his maternal superior, and so he must please her, or at least pretend that he's playing by rules that he and she and all the rest of us know he disrespects from jump.

Bonding

by Bill Gibron

[13.Nov.08] :. He’s that old friend we hardly recognize anymore, that middle aged idol that’s, apparently, going through a bit of a creative and cultural crisis. Granted, the secret agent is...

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Wrestling with Oliver Stone’s W. and the Enigma of George W. Bush

by Josh Timmermann

[6.Nov.08] :. Stone doesn't "get" Bush’s true historical legacy (any more than the rest of us do in 2008), but he cannily realizes that, warts and all, Bush is an undeniably pivotal figure.

Audiences turn a deaf ear to preachy Hollywood films

by Rene Rodriguez [McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)]

[31.Oct.08] :. Used to be, going to the movies was a way to escape the bustle and stress of the real world for a couple of hours. Lately, the multiplex has become a more tumultuous place. Choose the wrong picture,...

Independent Lens: Chicago 10

by Cynthia Fuchs

[22.Oct.08] :. Opening the Fall 2008 season of Independent Lens, Chicago 10 revises old ideas -- about what constitutes history and documentary.

W.

by Cynthia Fuchs

[17.Oct.08] :. The readymade caricature George Bush is as much a reflection of his moment as he is an occasion for Oliver Stone's latest stab at revisionist history.

‘W.’ is Brilliant Political Theater

by Bill Gibron

[16.Oct.08] :. How did it happen? How did a man with limited governing skills, a track record of career calamities, a laundry list of personality (and parental) issues, and a jerryrigged jailhouse conversion to...

Chicago 10

by Stuart Henderson

[15.Oct.08] :. Where is our Chicago Ten? Where are our “conspirators”? Is Obama really supposed to fix everything? Can we really pretend that things are still getting better all the time?

Talk, Talk, Talk: November 2008

by Bill Gibron

[11.Sep.08] :. Like the sainted sigh of relief that comes after another shriek-filled All Hallow's Eve, November usually means the start of the 'nominate me' process for the proposed prestige pictures of 2008.

Talk, Talk, Talk: October 2008

by Bill Gibron

[10.Sep.08] :. What studio suit thought this was a good idea? With four months to schedule your high priced efforts, you instead unload almost 30 overpriced pictures on an unsuspecting movie audience.

Chicago 10

by Cynthia Fuchs

[29.Feb.08] :. You can't make this stuff up: Bobby Seale, bound and gagged in a Chicago courtroom. But there it is, again, in big, brightly colored animation, in Brett Morgen's Chicago 10.

The Invasion

by Bill Gibron

[19.Aug.07] :. With 2007’s oft-delayed The Invasion, there is simply no more symbolic juice left.

The Invasion (2007)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[17.Aug.07] :. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel (who made the impressive Downfall), the film goes from sharp paranoid thriller to noisy action flick.

Monkey Business (Part 4: August)

by Bill Gibron

[4.May.07] :. In past years, Hollywood purposely counter programmed these renowned Cineplex dog days, trying to offset the perception that cinematic scraps were all the studios had to offer. From the look of this lame list, it's apparently back to the filmic fridge for some patently warmed over offerings.

Casino Royale (2006)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[16.Nov.06] :. The new Bond understands loss, but focuses on revenge instead of grief. He's a hard body in a hard new world.

Lady in the Water (2006)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[21.Jul.06] :. Story's whiter-than-white skin, bloody cuts, color-shifting hair, and need to keep wet make her a bizarre amalgamation of fantasies, alternately "male" and "childish."

Syriana (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[19.Jun.06] :. If you come away with nothing else from Syriana, it's that this concept -- winning -- is an illusion, at least in any sort of long run.

Syriana (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[23.Nov.05] :. This Middle Eastern spy thriller is complex and earnest, a film that repays close attention.

Broken Flowers (2005)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[5.Aug.05] :. A sort of minimalist male melodrama, Broken Flowers tracks a journey through regret and hope.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[22.Dec.04] :. Demme's movie reasserts that the fabled U.S. political landscape isn't transparent or democratic, but instead, corrupted by the individuals who manage it.

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[30.Jul.04] :. The Manchurian Candidate draws a line between the corporation and the government, sustaining a hope that the U.S. system might be salvaged by an honestly free election.

Ali: The Director’s Cut (2001)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[7.Jun.04] :. The bravest thing Ali does is to gesture toward, wonder at, and celebrate Muhammad Ali, and then let go of him.

Angels in America

by Todd R. Ramlow

[22.Dec.03] :. By far the most resonant aspect of Angels in America today is its exposure of simplistic struggles over definitions of 'good' and 'evil'.

Ali (2001)

by Cynthia Fuchs

[24.Dec.01] :. Ali embodies a kind of car-wreck charisma -- arrogant and self-conscious, beautiful and fierce, even on twenty-year-old tape, he can take your breath away. This ability to mesmerize makes Ali who he is, or more accurately, who everyone wants him to be. He's a cipher and a screen onto which viewers might project themselves.

Shaft (2000)

by Cynthia Fuchs

It’s Isaac Hayes’s music, of course, that resonates. Whatever else you say about that “complicated man” named John Shaft, that whaa-whaa-whaa theme song identifies him...

Ride with the Devil (1999)

by Todd R. Ramlow

Ride with the Devil is essentially two films in one. The first is a story of loyalty - to family, community, and nation - tested in the social and political upheavals of civil war. The second is a story of male bonding and love in a homosocial order, the negotiation of male-male desire, and male domestication, all triangulated and enabled through the body of a woman.

Ride with the Devil (1999)

by Cynthia Fuchs

Ride With the Devil dares to bring yet another version. Directed by Ang Lee and written by Lee and his usual collaborator James Schamus (who adapted Daniel Woodrell's novel Woe to Live On, a novel inspired, says the author, by today's warfare in the Balkans), the film is rather surprising, and not only because it stars Jewel as a Southern widow. Telling stories that don't usually get told, Ride With the Devil focuses on some of the War's more disgraceful and outrageous aspects, both personal and public.

Hamlet (2000)

by Beth Armitage

Hamlet often speaks in a voice-over or directly to the video camera that he is rarely without. Sometimes we see the results of these 'video diaries' as he rewatches them on his monitor -- his own Real World confessional.

Hamlet (2000)

by Cynthia Fuchs

I confess to feeling a certain dread when I first heard that Ethan ('I have this planet of regret') Hawke was starring in Michael Almereyda's updated-and-abbreviated Hamlet.