There are far worse places to be on a summer Saturday morning than the Smorgasburg food festival in East River State Park. You have a view of Manhattan from the Midtown skyline to the Williamsburg Bridge. If you're bored you can chat with other people in line, most of whom recognize the inherent silliness of…

Spike Lee is such a confident filmmaker that when one of his movies doesn't quite work, you almost wonder if it's your fault for not getting it. Secure in his talent for sweeping emotions and powerful visuals, he sets out to make a masterpiece with each new movie, and the worst thing you can say about him is that he…

1. That The Campaign could never come up with a fictional scenario that would rival the absurdity of what actually happens in our daily political discourse is an obvious point, yet one that needs to be made again nevertheless. Is any sort of shtick that Will Ferrell could dream up odder than a reality in which Newt…

1. The first three Jason Bourne films had an intensity, a vitality to them that made them feel urgent and relevant, grounded in the messy real world of global capitalism and a U.S. government that was alternately confused, corrupt, and terrified. The movies didn't have a specific politics other than paranoia:…

1. As a skeptic of the original Total Recall, I was ready to give its remake more than a fair shake. My primary issue with the original is how little it does with the film's initial, fantastical Philip K. Dick premise, that the difference between reality and fantasy is not only slim but perhaps irrelevant; that film…

1. The first two Batman films from director Christopher Nolan were so transcendent, so ambitious and challenging and grand, that The Dark Knight Rises feels like more of a disappointment than it should. The first two movies, especially The Dark Knight, were miracles, an impossible combination of universal themes,…

Oliver Stone approaches every film he makes as if it's the biggest, most important movie that will ever be made on the subject. When he's working with material to match his grand vision—JFK, Talk Radio, Nixon—he can produce hallucinatory film experiences.

1. The Amazing Spider-Man is less a reboot than a recital. It's professionally made and competent and sincere and well-acted, but it never quite overcomes the nagging sense that there's no reason for it to exist. Well, actually, there is a reason: Sony, to keep the rights to the character, needed to rush a movie into…

1. Of the myriad problems with Ted, Seth MacFarlane's flaming, masturbating fart of a comedy, the biggest one is that the teddy bear at its center is neither cute nor funny. The movie thinks he's both. For the movie's promising central joke to work—that a boy's teddy bear comes to life and then grows up alongside him…

1. One of my favorite Roger Ebert quotes goes like this: "The Muse visits during the act of creation, not before. Don't wait for her. Start alone." That's to say: To create great work, you must first work. Not everything you create will be perfect; in fact, most of it won't be. But you can't wait for inspiration to…

1. The brand Pixar has become so powerful and so reliable in the last decade that we forget that's all it is: A brand. We assume every new Pixar film will be well thought out and impeccably constructed, like the Pixar crew is one hivemind that taps into the American subconscious and springs a neverending well of…

1. Wes Anderson is considered by many to be a cold, dispassionate filmmaker more interested in creating miniature worlds to run around and play in than creating well-rounded, relatable human beings to inhabit them. You constantly hear the word "dollhouse" referenced when people discuss Anderson, a twee boy…

One of the knocks on Battleship is that it plays like a ripoff of a Michael Bay movie, but frankly, I wish any of Bay's recent films had been a fun as this very silly let's-kill-the-aliens action flick is. Directed by actor-turned-director Peter Berg (Hancock, the Friday Night Lights film), Battleship may be stoopid,…

1. There's a scene toward the end of The Dictator when you can see, finally, why Sacha Baron Cohen decided to wrap a whole movie around Admiral General Aladeen, the ruthless, clueless dictator of fictional country Wadiya. Without giving away any plot details, Aladeen is speaking to the United Nations about how good…

1. How was there ever a time that we considered Tim Burton weird? He certainly isn't weird now—give this guy a slight haircut and he's essentially an insurance salesman—but in retrospect, knowing the bloated, self-satisfied cookie-cutter hack Burton turned out to be makes one wonder what all the excitement was about…

1. The Avengers is a superhero movie so fun, full of so much pure fanboy-wank joy wrapped up in an accessible, relentlessly entertaining package, that I'm not sure anybody needs to make any more comic-book movies; this one might wrap it up. (One suspects they'll still find a way.) Made by and for—but, crucially, not …

1. There are several long stretches in which The Five-Year Engagement is the polar opposite of what anyone would consider "romantic" or "comedy." Jason Segel has always had a tinge of self-aggrandizing self-pity in his characters—the ones he plays, the ones he writes, and both—but for swaths of The Five-Year Engagement…

1. An old joke: "Why do women not like The Three Stooges? Because they're not funny." The appeal of The Three Stooges has always been inherently male, predominantly young male, specifically adolescent, glue-sniffing boy. Now, that's not to say that 10-year-olds the world over are obsessed with The Three Stooges;…