Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Posted December 27, 2015

Star Wars is once again delighting audiences, though I don’t know that it deserves quite the box office records its setting. Definitely better than the prequels, The Force Awakens introduces delightful new characters, leverages nostalgia to reinvent this universe and does it well. Full disclosure: I am not a Star Wars fan. Of course I grew up watching the original three on VHS. I saw the extended cuts in theaters and liked the originals better. I watched the prequels with excitement (until I actually saw Episode I) and curiosity. I know the first Star Wars is Episode IV and not […]

The Nine Lives of Leonardo DiCaprio

Posted December 12, 2015

LEONARDO DICAPRIO DOESN’T always survive. Titanic? Dead. Django Unchained? Unalive. The Departed? Departed. Romeo and Juliet? We won’t spoil that one for you, but you get the point. His new movie, The Revenant, takes the struggle not to die and really, really goes with it. In the film DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a real-life 1820s fur trapper who got mauled by a bear, was robbed and abandoned by his companions, and then spent months crawling to safety through the untamed American wilderness. WIRED: Watching the opening of The Revenant, all I could think was, “That looks really cold.”DICAPRIO: It was […]

Can Hollywood Handle Decent, Modest, Good-Humored Chris Hemsworth?

Can Hollywood Handle Decent, Modest, Good-Humored Chris Hemsworth?

Posted November 1, 2015

In March, Hemsworth, 32, hosted Saturday Night Live. The best bit was a send-up of those American Express commercials that feature famous people presenting themselves in modest, no-frills, this-is-the-real-me ways that are actually self-congratulatory and carefully contrived. Hemsworth is the most movie-starrish of his movie-star peers, by which I mean he’s the best-looking. Channing Tatum’s a hot young hunk, he however, has a beefcake quality. (He knows it, too, and uses it; it’s part of what makes him such a sly—and amusing—presence on-screen.) Bradley Cooper is the guy who was out of your league in college. Not that out of […]

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Posted May 2, 2015

I happened to watch Agents of SHIELD, the Dirty Half Dozen before I went to see Age of Ultron and it was pretty impressive how one picked up right where the other left off. It felt like one universe. It was one of the few things Agents of SHIELD did right. One of the things Age of Ultron managed is that despite all the previews and hype everywhere, I still went in not knowing what to expect. And I was surprised. I liked that the pacing of the third act wasn’t typical. I liked that it did the unexpected. I […]

Joss Whedon’s Astonishing Marvel Adventure

Joss Whedon’s Astonishing Marvel Adventure

Posted April 1, 2015

Even for a beloved and widely respected director living out his ultimate dream job at the helm of Avengers: Age of Ultron, it might be impossible to survive the Marvel Studios machine intact. “Thor’s dead!” Joss Whedon screamed. “I killed Thor!” It was at the end of a long day on the set of Avengers: Age of Ultron. The gargantuan production was in its final weeks last July on a converted back lot at a largely abandoned police training facility outside of London, doubling for the fictional Eastern European nation of Sokovia. Whedon had dreamed up a bit of business […]

best tv of 2014

best tv of 2014

Posted January 22, 2015

This is perhaps the longest into a new year I’ve waited to post my tv list. The problem was, is, whatever, that I’m not excited about it. Which is more about the tv shows than about the list itself (we all know I think lists are fun). I sorted through my hulu favorites, as I do each year, and couldn’t convince myself there were 10 shows that good in 2014. And I don’t know if this is a reflection of the state of tv shows or the fact that I’m watching fewer shows so, statistically it’s going to be more […]

Benedict Cumberbatch Amid Awards Season Crush

Benedict Cumberbatch Amid Awards Season Crush

Posted December 24, 2014

Benedict Cumberbatch is concerned that the world might be growing tired of him. Though the actor, who shot to fame as the titular character on the BBC series Sherlock, has long had a rabid and vocal fanbase, he is rapidly emerging as a leading man. His star turn in last year’s The Fifth Estate badly stumbled, but he more than compensated with wildly different roles in August: Osage County and 12 Years a Slave. And now he’s tipped for his first Oscar nomination, playing World War II codebreaker Alan Turing in the just-released drama The Imitation Game. Cumberbatch, making a […]

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

Posted December 20, 2014

I went into this film with an open mind. No, that’s a lie. I did go into it wanting to be proved wrong; hoping Peter Jackson would impress me with how he pulled it all off. Didn’t work out so well. The story ends before the title card! I’m sorry that’s kind of a spoiler, but really if it happens BEFORE THE TITLE CARD OF THE FILM can it really be considered a spoiler? If so, then I apologize. I was admittedly rolling my eyes a few times rather liberally after that start. Because my trust in this film was […]

Chris Hemsworth: The Manliest Man In Hollywood

Chris Hemsworth: The Manliest Man In Hollywood

Posted December 11, 2014

Chris Hemsworth grew up scrapping with two brothers (the actors Liam, younger, and Luke, elder) and guided by a father who once raced motorbikes and wrangled buffalo. He surfs and boxess and knows Muay Thai. And so I wondered, is Hemsworth the rare Hollywood leading man who is actually more robust, more manly in reality than the characters he plays? Normally he’d be out surfing—and I’d ask to tag along for this piece—but since the Malibu coastline is glass-flat this week, he has another suggestion: What if we go mountain biking instead? This is an excellent idea that frightens the hell out […]