leitch Page 10 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Geezer Minstrelsy. <em>Last Vegas</em>, Reviewed.
Hollywood movies get a lot of things wrong: Midwesterners, marriage, transforming robots. But Last Vegas reminds us that they're also terrible at depicting old age. It's not that studios don't make movies starring older actors—Escape Plan just came out—but when they do, they often paint a picture of...
<em>Dallas Buyers Club</em> Is Gay History For Straight People
In his blistering, deeply moving Grantland essay about 12 Years A Slave, Wesley Morris lays waste to decades of white-guilt piety in films about racism and slavery—A Time To Kill, Cry Freedom, Glory—in a single sentence: "They've been appeals to white audiences by white characters talking to other w...
This Is Not Lesbian Pornography: <em>Blue Is The Warmest Color</em>, Defended
Blue Is the Warmest Color should have been one of the feel-good stories of the fall. A moving three-hour drama about a young woman named Adèle's (Adèle Exarchopoulos) coming-of-age while pursuing a passionate relationship with her first love, an out lesbian named Emma (Léa Seydoux), this French film...
Help The Aged. <em>Escape Plan</em>, Reviewed.
It's touching to watch Sylvester Stallone try to act. In his early days with Rocky, the guy had charm, an ability to reveal a light touch beneath his average-palooka demeanor. But in recent years, he's become as rigid as his face: a giant mass of muscles and mumbled words. His soft side all but abse...
Anti-<em>Gravity</em>. <em>All Is Lost</em>, Reviewed.
1. I never got to write about Gravity in this space—Grierson took that for us—but I found it as terrific as most people did. Dizzying, awesome, disorienting, terrifying: It's earned all the praise it has received. But I couldn't get past one thing: Didn't the Sandra Bullock character's backstory se...
Cruelty Unchained. <em>Twelve Years A Slave</em>, Reviewed.
1. Twelve Years a Slave is a devastating movie experience, one that will leave you shaking with anger. This is not an attempt to shed new light on the shame of slavery, or, heaven forbid, a winky postmodern re-imagining of slavery as a self-referential cinematic revenge fantasy. (After seeing Twelve...
Pirates-Cardinals, Game 5 Of The NLDS: A Very Deadspin Preview
Tonight's game is win or die. Here's Emeritus and me breaking down everything you need to know....
Contained Space: <em>Captain Phillips,</em> Reviewed.
1. There's a moment in Paul Greengrass' United 93, one of the best films of the last decade, in which we are invited not to sympathize with the hijackers of Flight 93, exactly, but at least take a look at them as humans, if just for a moment. They're monsters, but they're people, on that plane, too,...
The Unexpected Films Of Alfonso Cuarón
Some directors never make the same film twice. They move around between genres, challenging audiences to try to figure out the connections between their very different movies. A great example of this is Alfonso Cuarón, who's made children's movies (A Little Princess), sexy coming-of-age tales (Y Tu ...
Zigging And Zagging And Then Ending: <em>Don Jon</em>, Reviewed
1. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is one of those actors for whom I find it nearly impossible not to root. He has an inherent, innate likability about him that doesn't seem forced, calculated or manufactured; he's a labrador puppy you have beers with. Now, I don't know anything about Joseph Gordon-Levitt in r...
Off-Putting Men, Fast Cars: <em>Rush</em>, Reviewed.
Rush succeeds not just because of what it is but because of what it isn't. A sports drama based on a true story, the film mostly stays away from the clichés that make fact-based sports movies so familiar. No rooting interests, no inspirational speeches, no feel-good message about the triumph of the ...
<em>Enough Said</em>: James Gandolfini Says Goodbye
Enough Said was always meant to be a bittersweet comedy-drama, but the film became additionally poignant after the unexpected death of one of its stars, James Gandolfini, this summer. One of his last movies, Enough Said isn't the definitive showcase for what the 51-year-old actor could do. (That's a...
American Nightmare: <em>Blue Caprice</em>, Reviewed
1. The John Muhammed/Lee Malvo Beltway shootings in October 2002 continue to occupy a specific segment of the American nightmare. The twisted, horrible genius of the killings was their selective randomness: The Beltway snipers chose their targets specifically so that people would believe they could...
The Best And Worst Of Summer Movies: An A.J. Daulerio Report
According to Grierson and Leitch, summer movie season is over. I agree. Here's my report. ...
The 16 Fall Movies You Should Be Excited About: A Guide
Labor Day is the signpost every year that the sugary summer junk is behind us and that the nutritious square meal of awards season has finally arrived. That's the theory, anyway: In actuality, summer movies like Before Midnight and Fruitvale Station will be as well-received as any Oscar bait, and th...
The Best And Worst Of Summer Movies: A Grierson & Leitch Report
Summer movie season is over. It's finally had its fill of us, leaving our mangled body twitching on the side of the road as it drives off with a rubbery squeal. Here at Grierson & Leitch, we're very much looking forward to fall and its crop of award-hungry prestige movies—we're speaking, of course, ...
Be Amused. Be Very Amused. <em>You're Next</em>, Reviewed.
1. You're Next is officially a horror movie—it is sold the way all horror movies are sold these days, with an ominous poster image and an appealingly simple, self-sustaining premise—but it's really a comedy. It is a comedy in the way Army of Darkness is a comedy, or The Cabin in the Woods is a comed...
Wasn't It Nice To See Everyone? <em>The World's End</em>, Reviewed.
As funny and kinetic as his films have been, director Edgar Wright has never topped Shaun of the Dead, which is his only movie as emotionally and thematically engaging as it is intensely watchable. In that terrific horror-comedy, some pals (led by Shaun, played by co-writer Simon Pegg) battled a gr...
Does Not Compute. <em>Jobs</em>, Reviewed.
If Steve Jobs had made movies, Jobs is the kind of thing he might have done: It aspires to be innovative while it strives to be accessible and user-friendly. Focusing on a crucial period of Jobs's life rather than offering the standard cradle-to-grave portrait, this tries to be a somewhat unconventi...
History As Pop As Camp: <em>The Butler</em>, Reviewed.
1. Lee Daniels is a total lunatic of a director, a man who knows nothing of restraint, decorum or moderation. Sometimes this works for him; his Precious was lurid and garish and melodramatic in a way that fit the material, making the protagonist's sufferings feel both pulpy and weirdly real. Mostly,...