williamfleitch Page 3 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Like <i>Short Circuit </i>For Knuckleheads: <i>Chappie, </i>Reviewed
1. District 9, the 2009 full-length debut from South African writer-director Neill Blomkamp, gave us an entirely new way of thinking about science-fiction movies. I wasn't as crazy about it as most other critics, but you couldn't deny that it was trying something different, creating an alternate u...
Whip It Good: <i>Fifty Shades of Grey, </i>Reviewed
1. I've never read the book Fifty Shades of Grey, but I'm fairly certain this film is the best possible adaptation of the material. From the looks of it, the 2011 erotica sensation seems not only to lack any semblance of a story, but even the backbone of one—as if author E.L. James never really th...
Dodge This: The Lousy, Endless <i>Jupiter Ascending, </i>Reviewed
1. Why did The Matrix work? For all its pseudo-philosophy and whiz-bang effects, for all its blue-pill-red-pill This is all an illusion sci-fi wonkery, may I humbly suggest that it was Keanu Reeves all along? Without him, you have a fun, expansive vision that may have never escaped its creators' h...
Johnny Depp's Weird, Mirthless Waterloo: <i>Mortdecai, </i>Reviewed
1. Not everything about Mortdecai is horrible. Let's see. Paul Bettany has a few charming asides as (ugh) Jock Strapp, a working-class Englishman brawler sworn to eternal and inexplicable fealty to a simpering idiot. There's a flashback scene where Ewan McGregor looks just like he did in Shallow G...
The Laptop Of Thor: <i>Blackhat, </i>Reviewed
1. Blackhat plays like a parody of a Michael Mann movie, which is depressing, given that it is a Michael Mann movie. He's one of my favorite filmmakers, with such a unique, distinct, relentlessly focused vision that you forgive all his shortcomings, from the deadly self-seriousness to the existenc...
The Grierson & Leitch 2015 Oscar-Nomination Predictions
Early tomorrow morning, nominations for the 87th Academy Awards will be announced. Now, lately, film writers have divided into two factions: You either hate horse races like this, or you're obsessed with them. This snapped into focus recently when the National Society of Film Critics chose Jean Lu...
An Interview With Jongin Craggs, Tommy's Mom
A couple of years ago, Tommy's mom, Jongin Craggs, emailed me out of the blue. Ms. Craggs, who lives in Champaign, Illinois, where Tommy's dad works as a math professor, told me that she read all the things I wrote and asked if I could maybe get Tommy to write a little bit more often; if it weren't ...
Grierson & Leitch's Best Films Of 2014, Part 2 (Nos. 5-1)
It's the final week of 2014, so we're wrapping the year up the usual way: with lists! Friday, we each gave you our five worst movies of 2014. Yesterday, we counted down the bottom halves of our Top 10s. Today: both our Top 5s....
Grierson & Leitch's Best Films of 2014, Part 1 (Nos. 10-6)
It's the final week of 2014, so we're wrapping the year up the usual way: with lists! Friday, we each announced our five worst movies of 2014. Today, we start counting down our favorites, starting with our respective picks for Nos. 6-10; tomorrow, we finish off with our Top 5s....
Grierson & Leitch's 2014 In Review: The Year's Worst Films
Yes, most people have already written their Top 10 movie lists for 2014. We're saving ours for the last week of the year, but while we wait for this full, rich, and weird movie year to end, we're going to start looking back at certain highlights. Today, it's a look at the worst movies of 20...
A Nation Of Echo Chambers: How The Internet Closed Off The World
Will Leitch, senior writer at Sports On Earth, culture writer for Bloomberg Politics, contributing editor at New York magazine and founder of Deadspin, is doing his yearly fill-in for Drew Magary on today's Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo. (Here is 2011's version, and here's 2012's and he...
Grierson & Leitch's 2014 In Review: The Best Forgotten Performances
Yes, most people have already written their Top 10 movie lists for 2014. We're saving ours for the last week of the year, but while we wait for this full, rich, and weird movie year to end, we're going to start looking back at certain highlights. Today, it's our favorite forgotten performanc...
Grierson & Leitch's 2014 In Review: The Year's Best Movie Scenes
Yes, most people have already written their Top 10 movie lists for 2014. We're saving ours for the last week of the year, but while we wait for this full, rich, and weird movie year to end, we're going to start looking back at certain highlights. Today, it's our favorite individual scenes. Tomor...
Sony Totally Caved On <i>The Interview</i>, And Now We're All Screwed
Monday night, Seth Rogen was a guest during the final week of The Colbert Report. Ordinarily, he isn't much of a "get," in talk-show parlance—he's funny, sure, but he always makes the rounds when he has a new movie, no big deal. But this was the first (and probably only) time that his appearance h...
White Flight: The Knuckleheaded <i>Exodus: Gods and Kings</i>, Reviewed
1. I'm not sure who ever could have thought that Exodus: Gods and Kings was a good idea. Putting aside—only for a moment—the much-discussed "whitewashing" of the cast, the movie seems almost specifically designed to appeal to absolutely no one. It's a Bible story, but it paints Old Testament God as ...
<em>Happy Valley</em> Could Be Anywhere, And That's The Scariest Part
Late in Amir Bar-Lev's harrowing and deeply fair documentary Happy Valley, which tracks the Jerry Sandusky tragedy at Penn State and its craterous aftermath, attorney Andrew Shubin, who represented several of Sandusky's victims, says:...
So Stupid It Just Might Work: <em>Dumb And Dumber To</em>, Reviewed
1. Before you get too wrapped up in the negative early reaction to Dumb and Dumber To, the 20-years-later sequel to the 1994 mega-hit, remember that critics hated the first one. Critics are notoriously bad at predicting what comedies are going to stand the test of time; the target is always moving...
Get On The Jake Gyllenhaal Bandwagon Now: <em>Nightcrawler</em>, Reviewed
1. Why don't we talk about Jake Gyllenhaal more? This is an actor who...
2015 Oscar Watch: Yes, It's Time To Start Arguing About This Already
As of this second, we are 122 days away from the 2015 Academy Awards, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris as Billy Crystal growls angrily in the corner and everyone tries real hard not to make a Renee Zellweger joke. That's a ludicrously long time from now, but there won't be a single moment between now...
Denzel Washington Will Kick Your Ass Now: <em>The Equalizer</em>, Reviewed
1. I know we just talked about Liam Neeson around here, but I feel obliged to bring him back up, because suffice it to say, if Liam Neeson doesn't have the aforementioned late-career action-movie rebirth, there is no way The Equalizer exists. Ostensibly a big-screen reboot of the CBS crime procedu...