Graphic Artist Mike Mills Starts Something New with Beginners

Playing an emotionally asphyxiated illustrator whose cancer-stricken dad comes out of the closet at age 75, Ewan McGregor looks positively yummy in this gay-is-OK dramedy from the distributor that brought us The Kids Are All Right. In fact, Beginners, a semi-autobiographical movie by SoCal skater-boy-turned-graphic-designer-and-filmmaker Mike Mills, has no shortage…

Beginners: a gay-is-OK dramedy

Playing an emotionally asphyxiated illustrator whose cancer-stricken dad comes out of the closet at age 75, Ewan McGregor looks positively yummy in Beginners, a gay-is-OK dramedy from the distributor that brought us The Kids Are All Right. In fact, this semi-autobiographical movie by SoCal skater-boy-turned-graphic-designer-and-filmmaker Mike Mills has no shortage…

Larry Crowne: Tom Hanks ages into midlife obsolescence

For a movie called Larry Crowne, it sure is tough to get a solid read on the character of Larry Crowne. Directed, co-written by, and starring Tom Hanks in the title role, the film seems to want to be some kind of postrecessional pick-me-up, an “It Gets Better” video for…

Hobo With a Shotgun: nauseatingly violent sleaze

Pick a reason to balk at this spot-on, garishly threadbare paean to ’80s no-budget sleaze: It apes a genre that was already creaky when its director/co-writer, Jason Eisener, was still in nappies; it’s nauseatingly violent; it began life (and arguably should’ve finished it) as a mock trailer for faux-grindhouse gazillionaires…

Hipster Batman and Other Picks for the Geek Film Festival

Florida Supercon is this weekend, and this year, there’s a new addition:  the Geek Film Festival. It’s off to a big start with over 50 movies screening. There are documentaries, sci-fi, and horror flicks as well as parodies and shorts. There are profiles of cartoonists and even a few cartoons…

Cary Elwes on Princess Bride, His Sex Symbol Status, and Comic Cons

​Cary Elwes. Hubba hubba. No one’s saying the man isn’t a great actor, but he’s also obviously a dreamboat. The British screen star stole a generation of ladies’ hearts as Westley, the farm boy in The Princess Bride, and then he made us laugh in Mel Brooks’ spoof Robin Hood: Men…

Horror Movies That Will Make You Turn Amish

FlickrTechnology is frightening. Just ask the Amish. After all, computers contract and die of viruses on a regular basis. Office printers have been known to burst into flames. Televisions stifle demons with white lines and black fuzz. Then there are cell phones, with their inability to detect a signal at…

Blank City Catalogs Cultural Gatekeepers of NYC’s No Wave Scene

Blank City, which opens this weekend at Miami Beach Cinematheque, is a self-defeating user-friendly primer on a group of films whose aura was enhanced by the fact that one had to brave scenester gatekeepers to find them. A loose history of underground movies from the hybridized gallery-art/loft-rock/filmmaking scene that coalesced…

Basketball Wives Episode 4: Tempers Run High at Polo

We knew last night’s episode of Basketball Wives was going to be good when Royce Reed told Rafer Alston’s fiancée Ashley Walker, “I’m not ghetto, but I’m hood.” So that means what exactly? While she tries to explain the Evelyn Lozada brawl from the last episode, from we understand, it…

Suffer Through Superhero Fatigue in Green Lantern

It’s 10 minutes before a human character appears on-screen in Green Lantern, a personality-free franchise-launcher that opens this weekend. Via a heavily CGI’d prologue, we learn that The Universe is patrolled by a group of multi-species warriors called The Green Lantern Corps–with each member issued an actual camping lantern, which…