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Film
'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri' Captures the Conflicts Over Police Violence
It can't be a coincidence this film takes place in Missouri, the birthplace of the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
02 Nov 2017
Television
'True Detective' and the Death of Television Criticism
Something has gone wrong if critics consider True Detective the best that contemporary television has to offer.
23 Jun 2014
Reviews
'Now You See Me' Is Super Slick
To be fair, Now You See Me is only nominally about super slick magic. It's really a super slick caper movie.
31 May 2013
Reviews
Natural Born Killers: The Director's Cut
Stone's pedigree secure, the Hollywood maverick turned on the system itself; tarring sensationalism, public bloodlust, and judicial entropy, seemingly with the same brush.
15 Nov 2009
Film
Summer of Same: May 2009
May's titles include the fourth films in two aging franchises, more Pixar perfection, and the reboot of a TV series from 40 years ago. And they say there are no new ideas.
26 Apr 2009
Film
Part 1: The Thin Red Line to Star Wars Episode I (January - May 1999)
The first part of PopMatters' look back at the films of 1999 is bookended by the long awaited return of two cinematic auteurs of wildly different styles, Terrence Malick and George Lucas.
22 Mar 2009
Reviews
Seven Pounds
Equally afflicted by an old-school weepies affect and new-agey self-righteousness, Seven Pounds is by turns clumsy and overbearing.
18 Dec 2008
Film
Exquisite Agony
This holiday season, Mickey Rourke (in The Wrestler) and Will Smith (Seven Pounds) suffer for all us sinners.
18 Dec 2008
Reviews
Battle in Seattle
Even as various people try to "do their jobs" in Battle in Seattle, they are repeatedly boxed in by lack of information and lack of power.
18 Sep 2008
Film
Talk, Talk, Talk: December 2008
Just like the end of an inspiring speech that may or may not succeed in making its point, these final four weeks before 2009 tend to define or defeat the entire awards season purpose.
11 Sep 2008
Film
Talk, Talk, Talk: September 2008
From wars both past and present to a number of nail-biting thrillers, September is sizing up as a potentially profitable one.
08 Sep 2008
Reviews
Transsiberian
Transsiberian makes provocative connections between external and internal states, the ways that composition can reveal character.
17 Jul 2008
Featured: Top of Home Page
A Gallery of Good Works: The Best Films of 2007
From Julian Schnabel's artsy The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to the legendary Coen Brothers splendid adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, PopMatters counts down the 30 best films of 2007.
10 Jan 2008
Featured: Top of Home Page
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.
08 Jan 2008
Reviews
The Walker
Like the heroes of several of Paul Schrader's other films -- American Gigolo, Light Sleeper, and, to an extent, Auto Focus -- Carter moves among women as if visiting an alien planet.
09 Dec 2007
Film
No Country for Old Men
The desolate landscape and moral layout evoke old Westerns, but the film, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, also reconsiders the genre's conventions, comparing now and "the old times."
08 Nov 2007
Film
The Pay Off: The Best Film of 2006
For many of the movies on PopMatters' 2006 list of the year's best films, it is clear that a heavy personal and professional stake was riding on the final product.
10 Jan 2007
Reviews
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
That a down home jamboree could be interesting to heavy-metal loving middle school students speaks to its wide.
Michael Buening
15 Oct 2006
Reviews
Cheers: The Complete Eighth Season
The classic Woody one-liner doesn't further a plot, but it does reaffirm his earnest oddness.
25 Jul 2006
Film
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
Simultaneously strange and familiar, not himself, Bob lives inside an ooky, unsolvable world that mirrors our own ongoing fears, of surveillance, loss, and forgetting.
06 Jul 2006
Film
A Scanner Darkly (2006)
The suits make for images so fascinating they feel nearly "addictive," appropriate given that the film is about (among other things), viewing, reality, and addiction.
Chris Barsanti
06 Jul 2006
Film
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
A Prairie Home Companion combines typical Altman strategies, like overlapping dialogue and converging multiple storylines, as well as his fanatical appreciation for the process of creating art.
Matt Mazur
08 Jun 2006
Reviews
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
You might call A Prairie Home Companion an unlikely Lindsay Lohan movie. You could also call it the best work she's done, the best work she's likely to do, or the best chance she's had to do good work.
08 Jun 2006
Film
North Country (2005)
As the film more or less locks you into Josey's perspective, it appears that even the bleak environment denotes her perpetual exhaustion.
Cynthia Fuchs
21 Oct 2005
Film
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005)
Prize Winner goes through odd motions to set Evelyn's taxing context and her admirable survival, its most extraordinary moment turns surreal.
Cynthia Fuchs
13 Oct 2005
Reviews
This So-Called Disaster (2004)
This So-Called Disaster is more impressionistic than comprehensive.
Samantha Bornemann
16 Jan 2005
Film
This So-Called Disaster (2004)
The real surprise is Sam Shepard's candor when recounting for Michael Almereyda the painful details of his father's deterioration.
Michael Healey
12 May 2004
Film
Anger Management (2003)
Dave (Adam Sandler) grumbles okay, to everything, his face reorganized into a permanent twist.
Cynthia Fuchs
10 Apr 2003
Reviews
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