Features
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.
Thursday, January 6 2011
The Best DVDs of 2010
As the medium continues to struggle with significance in the steady "streaming" of the 21st Century, here are PopMatters' picks for the best the format(s) have to offer.
Thursday, May 6 2010
2010 Summer Movie Preview - August
We round out our summer preview with the August releases, a rather dim bunch unfortunately. Will Edgar Wright save us from summer movie hell with the new Michael Cera vehicle?
Wednesday, January 9 2008
Performance Art: The Best Acting of 2007 - Male
From the tender and eerie precision of Sam Riley's depiction of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in Control to yet another superlative performance by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, PopMatters highlights the best male actors of 2007.
Friday, March 2 2007
The PopMatters 'Short Ends & Leader' Spring Film Preview
In order to separate the worthy from the worthless, PopMatters' "Short Ends & Leader" editor is highlighting 10 new films he's looking forward to this spring.
Columns
Monday, August 30 2010
'Scott Pilgrim' and What Movies Mean to Comics
Why do comics readers care about the movies made from their favorite books?
Thursday, May 6 2010
Comics: It's Such a Big Small World
One of the key differences between Stumptown and Comic-Con is that the bigger gathering is the fans' party, while the smaller event is the creators' shindig.
Reviews
Friday, August 13 2010
'Scott Pilgrim vs. the World': Love Is a Nintendo Battlefield
Scott Pilgrim deftly recasts the YA emo romantic comedy inside a snow-globe fantasy of underground rock bands, epic Mortal Kombat battles, and electric kisses.
Tuesday, April 24 2007
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Hot Fuzz is all about the guys. And who needs girls when you have guns?
Thursday, September 23 2004
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Casting Bill Nighy as a zombie -- or more accurately, a zombie to be -- may not be precisely innovative, but it's clever and wholly enjoyable.
Blogs
Thursday, November 11 2010
2010: The Year of the Misunderstood Movie
If it goes down as anything, 2010 will be seen as the year of the misunderstood movie, an artistic anomaly which saw at least four fine films fall by the commercial wayside.
Monday, November 8 2010
Sidekicks Rule!
Ten examples of cinematic 'second bananas', the glue that holds most superhero/genre efforts together.
Tuesday, August 31 2010
Scott Pilgrim vs. Thematic Clarity
Inasmuch as Pilgrim explores the "save the princess" archetype and questions romance as an abstracted end point arrived at through violence, the story then summarily rejects deeper characterization by asking us to forget all that and cheer for the death of the final boss anyway -- simply because he's a bigger jerk than Scott is.
Monday, August 16 2010
Game(r) Over
Simple math would suggest that 'Scott Pilgrim' only played to those already prepared for it, failing to move beyond the invested in-crowd. They couldn't even reach those who loved Edgar Wright's work before.
Wednesday, August 11 2010
Making Mr. Wright
Edgar Wright is cut from the same cloth as the members of Monty Python some 50 years before, a British boy capable of great wit and even greater insight.
News
Saturday, July 28 2007
'Bad Boys' influenced the British makers of 'Hot Fuzz'
The British comedy "Hot Fuzz," out this week on DVD, plays like a compendium of every action movie and cop thriller cliche ever made. The…
Friday, April 20 2007
'Hot Fuzz': Filmakers approve the use of deadly farce
"The one word that we bristle at is 'spoof.'"
Friday, April 20 2007
'Hot Fuzz': An Over-the-top Brit-riff
Simon Pegg is the silliest David Caruso since the real one in Hot Fuzz, an over-the-top Brit-riff on cop movies, cop shows and the CSI…
Thursday, April 19 2007
Taking aim at cop movies with 'Hot Fuzz'
Most filmmakers hate the city-a-day promotion tours that inevitably end up producing a lot more sitting around -- in airports, airplanes, taxis, hotel rooms and…
