After fifty years and twenty-three Bond films, I can safely assure you that Agent 007 is still busily pursuing anonymous henchmen aboard moving vehicles, seducing women by simply turning around and looking at them, and refusing to ascend skyscrapers in…
The Film Canon: Star Wars (1977)
It feels a little silly to include Star Wars in a compendium of films you must see, if only because it’s a given that everyone’s already seen it. When someone tells me they haven’t seen Star Wars, I briefly consider…
Maxwell’s Movie Review: Cloud Atlas
Some movies are like real life – painfully realistic, often cynical or sad, these seek to portray a truth about the world we live in. Many of these are marvelous films – the best among them including Mike Leigh’s Another…
The Film Canon: Jules and Jim (1962)
François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim begins in a state of pure bliss. According to every movie everywhere, from roughly 1800 to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Europe was an embodiment of happiness. This is probably the furthest thing from the truth, but…
The Film Canon: Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Singin’ in the Rain exists in the kind of place that can only exist in the movies, where gossip reporters hype movies as “the outstanding event of 1927!” and people still call movies “pictures”. Tinseltown is a bright and vivid…
TV Review: Modern Family “The Butler’s Escape”
This season of Modern Family seems like it’ll be turn out to be much the same as the last two: riotously funny, tremendously warmhearted, and alarmingly inconsistent. There are episodes of such comedic perfection (last week’s “Schooled” came close) and…
TV Review: Modern Family “Schooled”/”Snip”
Three-time consecutive Emmy winner Modern Family is now three episodes into its fourth season, and its proving to be a rollicking senior year for the riotously funny mockumentary series. The first of the night’s double-header, however, wasn’t about senior year,…
