Features
Tuesday, June 19 2012
Essential Film Performances - 2012 Edition Part Two
PopMatters follows up our hugely popular 100 Essential Female and Male Performances feature and 2010 update with 50 additions to the essentials list. Part two features Ellen Burstyn, Diahann Carroll and more...
Wednesday, January 12 2011
The Best Films of 2010
Among this year's winners include a fake documentary, a comedy about Jihad, a vampire story NOT dealing with tacky tween romance, a haunting hillbilly noir, and an elegant tale about clones. Not necessarily the usual cinematic suspects.
Wednesday, January 5 2011
The Best Female Film Performances of 2010
The ladies really lit up the big screen, delivering the kind of brilliant acting work that makes picking a mere 20 that much more difficult, let alone unearthing a clear number one.
Friday, January 8 2010
The Best DVDs of 2009
Let's face it, when the content inside is less than meaningful, how better to market your particular movie than with plenty of digital packaging bells and whistles. Many of our 2009 choices reflect this strategy. Others are great all by themselves.
Thursday, April 12 2007
Aronofsky: A Shockingly Talented and Aggressive Filmmaker
Aside from being the early efforts of a shockingly talented and aggressive filmmaker, Requiem for a Dream and Π -- while relating quite different stories -- share an underlying narrative structure and a profound concern for the individual's deeply embedded need for the patterns that inform his/her life.
Columns
Thursday, March 8 2012
Identity and Desire: The Search for Emotional Realism in Cinema
The manifestation of jealousy and desire is subtle. It develops over time, and if set off, the act of aggression may just as likely be one of attachment and ardor.
Friday, December 19 2008
Exquisite Agony
This holiday season, Mickey Rourke (in The Wrestler) and Will Smith (Seven Pounds) suffer for all us sinners.
Reviews
Friday, April 1 2011
'Black Swan' Entangles a Director's Obsession and an Actor's Commitment
It's Darren Aronofsky's seriousness that makes Black Swan work as horror (and camp, for that matter, if that's your bag).
Friday, December 3 2010
'Black Swan': Give Me More of That Bite
As much as Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan is about art and artists, greed and gifts, it is also about costs.
Friday, May 1 2009
The Wrestler
Like 'The Ram', we do whatever we can to make it in this world with our dignity or our bodies – though rarely both – intact.
Wednesday, December 17 2008
The Wrestler
Just four minutes into The Wrestler, it looks like Randy has good reason to cling to his past, as his present is so exceedingly unpleasant.
Wednesday, November 29 2006
The Fountain
The Fountain worries too much about crafting its symbols... to have time for Tom and Izzi's lives.
Blogs
Monday, January 31 2011
The Guild-ed Cages of Awards Season
After decades of decided handwringing, Hollywood finally has what it wants: a sense of specialness undeterred by surprise or a sense of wonder.
Monday, December 6 2010
'Black Swan': Beauty and the Untapped Beast
Black Swan is beguiling and seductive, using recognizability and the known realities of a life in service of art and moving way beyond the easier explanations.
Friday, December 19 2008
Rourke's Rennaisance Mirrors that of this 'Wrestler'
Man is not a perfect machine. He is flawed, easily broken, capable of incredibly feats and destined to die off damaged and corrupt. Luckily for…
News
Tuesday, November 30 2010
'Black Swan' put Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis' friendship to the test
LOS ANGELES — After pirouetting for hours on the set of "Black Swan," Natalie Portman would sometimes remove her pointe shoes, towel the sweat off…
Monday, January 12 2009
Marisa Tomei tries to find the naked truth in ‘The Wrestler'
There's a phrase that the sportscaster Tony Kornheiser likes to use describing woman of a certain age who retain every bit of their sexual allure…
Thursday, January 8 2009
Mickey Rourke: Grappling with his past and winning out in ‘The Wrestler'
TORONTO - For a few days at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, where Mickey Rourke's "The Wrestler" stunned audiences and started a bidding…
