review Page 813 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
In Sickness And In Health. <em>Amour</em>, Reviewed.
When my wife and I got married, I gave a toast where I laid out all I wanted for us: A long, healthy, happy life. Not great riches, not great success—just a fulfilling marriage that would sustain us both for the rest of our lives. So far, we've been lucky, and I'm grateful for that, but as anyone wh...
The Year In JaVale McGee, Our Favorite Basketball Player
No NBA player is closer to Deadspin's heart than JaVale McGee. That's because JaVale McGee only makes spectacular plays—the plays that no one else in the NBA could or would make, because they're cowards. To commemorate the man with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, here's the best of McG...
A Suffocating Triumph: <em>Zero Dark Thirty</em>, Reviewed
1. I've always thought the best compliment you can give a movie is that, while it's playing, you forget not only that you are watching a movie, but also that you are a person with a life that was going on before the movie and will continue going on afterward. These are the transformative films, the ...
The Deep Breath Before The Plunge. <em>The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey</em>, Reviewed.
1. It's always important to remember that the first film of any trilogy—particularly one that has to not only introduce a bunch of new characters but take time to remind us of all the people/dwarves/elves/wizards we'd forgotten in the nine years since we last saw them—is always going to be the slowe...
The Year In Gronk
Rob Gronkowski is what would happen if Dr. Frankenstein created a monster, but instead of blood, the doctor filled his veins with Keystone Light. Here are some of the best Gronk stories from this past year....
Bill Murray: A Traitor To His Crass. <em>Hyde Park on Hudson</em>, Reviewed.
1. Everything about Hyde Park on Hudson feels like it's taking place in a wax museum. Actually, that's not giving it enough credit: It's more like the Hall of Presidents robotic displays at Walt Disney World....
Damn It Feels Profound To Be A Gangster: <em>Killing Them Softly</em>, Reviewed
1. Killing Them Softly is a polemic disguised as a thriller, a series of scenes featuring various tiers of low-level gangsters shooting, talking, drinking, and complaining, unaware, somewhat blissfully, that they're all metaphors. (It's hard enough to be a gangster without having to walk around symb...
<em>Hitchcock</em>: For The Birds
Over time, great individuals can attain such a level of public adoration that any sort of criticism leveled against them is treated as sacrilege, whether they be Abe Lincoln, Mother Teresa, or a Beatle not named Ringo. Naturally, that inspires a certain kind of person to take dead aim at such sacred...
Incense And Disappointments. <em>Life of Pi</em>, Reviewed.
1. Life of Pi is about 65 minutes of staggering cinematic beauty surrounded by 55 minutes of touchy-feely New Age claptrap. You recognize the kind, with its choose-your-own-adventure brand of spirituality, and God as captain of the ship sailing everyone's personal journey for self-fulfillment and un...
100 Thoughts About 100 NCAA Teams From The Basketball Prospectus Guide To The 2012-13 Season
The following previews were taken from College Basketball Prospectus. Buy the book as a PDF for $9.94. It's also available in paperback. For more, check out the Basketball Prospectus website....
Vincible. <em>Silver Linings Playbook</em>, Reviewed.
1. She's a grieving cop's widow, prone to nymphomania, locked away in a shed behind her parents' home, profoundly damaged—not broken, but close. He's a bipolar basket case who nearly beat a man half to death for showering with his wife, the same wife with whom he obsessively wants to reconcile, even...
Tim Lincecum Did Handstands And Puked At A New York Club, And Other Unconfirmed Athlete Stories From Yelp Reviews
Yelp is a helpful website if you want overly critical reviews of small businesses from people who have no other outlet through which to voice their long-winded frustration. After digging through some of the criticsm, however, Yelp is great for another purpose: finding weird stories about athletes. ...
Other Than That, How Was The Movie? <em>Lincoln</em>, Reviewed.
1. The opening scene of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln will probably ring false to you and confirm your preconceptions of a sweeping, soft-focus, John Williams-scored Steven Spielberg film about Abraham Lincoln. It features Lincoln, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, visiting troops right before a fierce Civil...
James Bond, The Dark Knight. <em>Skyfall</em>, Reviewed.
When Casino Royale came out in 2006, it was rightly praised for lots of reasons: Daniel Craig's franchise-rehabilitating turn as James Bond; the excellent action sequences; the fact that it was smart and compelling, unlike a lot of recent Bond movies that had gotten progressively sillier, almost sel...
Washington's Height. <em>Flight</em> Reviewed.
1. Until the last 10 minutes, Flight in large part resembles one of those tough, dark character studies they used to make in the '70s, like The Gambler or The Verdict, in which we watch a man who has lost control of his life face external circumstances that give him one last chance to save himself. ...
30 Paragraphs About 30 NBA Teams From The Basketball Prospectus Guide To The 2012-13 Season
The following previews were culled from the team chapters of the ever-incisive Pro Basketball Prospectus. Buy the book as a PDF for $9.98. It's also available in paperback. For more, check out the Basketball Prospectus website....
A Big Huge Ball Of Crazy. <em>Cloud Atlas</em>, Reviewed.
1. I've never read the book Cloud Atlas, but I bet it's good. Judging from the film, the book must be insanely ambitious—narratively and stylistically—clearly vying to be no less than some sort of grand binding theory of everything, throughout history, forever. That sort of ambition can work on the ...
The Monster Wore A Tank Top. <em>Paranormal Activity 4,</em> Reviewed.
1. Like Grierson, I'm a sucker for the Paranormal Activity films. I don't care that their stories don't make sense, that apparently there's some sort of mythology tying everything together behind them, that no one ever, ever turns that goddamned camera off. These movies work not as movies—they're ba...
Ben Affleck's Only Weakness As A Director: Casting Ben Affleck. <em>Argo</em>, Reviewed.
1. Argo is such a terrific, jaw-dropping true-life tale, with such a natural, seamless movie storyline, that anyone who knows the story would beg the filmmakers not to screw it up. So it's a relief that they absolutely do not do that. There are so many tones to juggle here; this is a film that veers...
God Bless Liam Neeson, He Sure Does Try. <em>Taken 2</em>, Reviewed.
If you liked the first Taken, it was probably because of Liam Neeson. With that unlikely hit, the Oscar-nominated actor established himself as a tough-guy action star, a development that was surprising not because he's a bad fit for the role but, rather, because he proved really adept at it. Anyone ...