***1/2 out of **** My review of The End Of The Tour (click here), at Crosswalk.com, about journalist David Lipsky's days-long intimate interview with renowned author David Foster Wallace, on the final leg of Wallace's 1996 book tour for his magnum opus "Infinite Jest" . The End Of The Tour is ranked #20 (tie) in the Honorable Mention section of my Top Ten [...]
“Star Wars is a specific, gorgeous concoction of George’s.” - J.J. Abrams I have to say that, just a day or so after publishing a defense as to why The Force Awakens wasn’t just lazy fan service but, rather, an intentional, loyal continuation of George Lucas’s original echoing design (click to read and watch), it [...]
Once considered the biggest Academy Awards pre-cursor, the Golden Globes aren't quite the Oscar bellwether they used to be (industry guilds have become the major tea leaves). Still, given its status as a Hollywood tradition - and event - winning a Golden Globe matters. They won't affect the Academy Award nominations (those ballots closed last week), [...]
The Force is still strong, but The Revenant is the first to challenge it. After a $41.6 million weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens becomes the first film in history to cross the $800 million mark in North America, bringing its mounting record domestic haul to $812 million in just its 24th day of release - [...]
The new Cinemark Classics Series slate is set for January and February of 2016. A nice, diverse lineup, with a couple of Bogart classics I'm particularly looking forward to (Madre especially). Click on the image above to read dates and showtimes (movies screen on Sundays and Wednesdays). Click on the image below to find a participating theater near [...]
To everyone who's been complaining that The Force Awakens is just a lazy New Hope redux: STOP! Please read - and watch (video below) - the following. If you still have something to complain about, then at least you'll be complaining about the right thing. (I also addressed this at more length in my Force Awakens breakdown/predictions [...]
For the first time in 18 years, a Star Wars movie sits atop the All-Time Movie Box Office List. But what's truly historic - even shocking - is how fast it got there. By only its 20th day of theatrical release in North America, Star Wars: The Force Awakens tractor-beamed in $764.4 million to become the #1 Movie [...]
There's a lot of big Oscar contenders missing from The Writers Guild of America's list of Best Screenplay nominees...but then that's par for the course, given the guild's extremely picky rules (nominees must be guild members, must be working under their jurisdiction, etc.). Quentin Tarantino, for example, hasn't been eligible for years (he's not a guild member), yet while [...]
Based on how different The Force Awakens is from the Star Wars prequels - both in tone and visual style - it should come as no surprise that creator George Lucas doesn't particularly care for the latest entry into the saga that he began. Still, to hear him actually say it is another thing. After Episode VII's premiere, at which the most praise [...]
Straight Outta Compton is a lock for a Best Picture nomination. That's basically the major tea leaf from today's announcement by the Producers Guild of America for their Best Film nominees of 2015. Traditionally, this guild's choices are virtually the equivalent of the Academy's Best Picture slot, and while the picks between the two don't always line up 1-to-1, [...]
I Can't Unsee That Movie: film news and reviews by Jeff Huston 