Interview: Warm Bodies Co-stars Nicholas Hoult and Teresa Palmer

The enjoyable zombie romance Warm Bodies might seem at first like some sort of unholy hybrid of the Twilight “I’m in Love with a Monster” teen fare and zombie-apocalypse pop-culture trends. But in fact, as directed and adapted by Jonathan Levine (The Wackness, 50/50) from Isaac Marion’s yearning, existential 2011 novel, Warm Bodies feels more [...]

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My Top 25 Favorite Films of 2012

I’ll spare you my rambling thoughts about why I love/hate end-of-year (or even 13-days-after-the-end-of-the-year) lists, and I’ll spare you flowery prose about what a rich/poor/weak/strong/fascinating/frustrating/encouraging/discouraging/“insert-cinematic-trend-here” year 2012 was at the theater. Instead, a few bookkeeping matters: I draw a fuzzy, idiosyncratic distinction between a “great” film and a “favorite” film. In short, the former makes [...]

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So, About Those Oscar Nominations…

The Oscars tend to twist us film critics and writers into pretzels of varying paradoxical silliness. There are film writers who truly love the Academy Awards and genuinely embrace them each late winter as a glamorous celebration of the art, craft, and business of (mostly) Hollywood movie magic. There are just as many film critics [...]

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Interview: The Impossible Director J.A. Bayona

During the holiday/awards season, most “prestige” films aim big–big messages, big emotions, big spectacle, big casts, and especially big running times. Based on a true story, The Impossible centers on the devastating spectacle of the 2004 tsunami, specifically on how it caught up and separated a real Spanish family vacationing in Thailand. And in doing [...]

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The Hobbit: An All-Too Expected Journey… or Been There and Back Again

I’m almost envious of a movie-goer approaching Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey with no fore-knowledge of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels or Jackson’s previous The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Not because they have such sumptuous treats of adventurous imagination ahead of them to discover, though I suppose that’d be nice. But to [...]

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Interview: The Sessions Star John Hawkes

In recent years, long-time character actor John Hawkes has slowly moved from strong but low-key supporting roles in television shows like Deadwood and Eastbound and Down and indie faves like Me You and Everyone We Know into attention- (and Oscar nomination) grabbing roles like the quietly menacing Teardrop in Winter’s Bone and the, yes, the [...]

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Interview: A Royal Affair Writer-director Nikolaj Arcel

Despite its scandalous, salacious title, the Danish film A Royal Affair is as much about the 18th-century struggle between faith-based fear and Enlightenment ideals as it is about a queen’s furtive glances during court dinners. There is a passionate affair in the film: between the British-born Queen Caroline Mathilde of Denmark (Swedish actressAlicia Vikander) and the [...]

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Interview: The Sessions Writer-Director Ben Lewin

When Ben Lewin decided to tell the story of poet and journalist Mark O’Brien, the Polish-born Australian-American writer-director knew he had a few hurdles to overcome. O’Brien, who died in 1999, was a childhood polio victim and spent most of his adult life in an iron lung. That presented several challenges: How to make an engaging, [...]

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Interview: Smashed Star Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Co-Writer-Director James Ponsoldt

A film about a young couple dealing with how much they drink, Smashed defies most of the narrative and emotional conventions you might expect when you hear “alcoholism movie.” Smashed was written by Susan Burke and James Ponsoldt, directed by Ponsoldt, and stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) and Aaron Paul (Breaking [...]

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Interview: Looper Star Joseph Gordon-Levitt

It’s always exciting to watch a talented young performer get his or her start, then move on to defy earlier typecasting, and finally reach that coveted career tipping point where suddenly he or she is everywhere. Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s been through the first two stages, and in the last couple years has continued what seems [...]

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Interview: The Perks of Being a Wallflower’s Author and Writer-Director Stephen Chbosky

One of the year’s biggest small-cinema surprises is author Stephen Chbosky’s deftly affecting screen adaptation and direction of his own 1999 semi-autobiographical novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower. The film, like the novel, chronicles the coming of age of sensitive freshman Charlie (Percy Jackson & the Olympians‘ Logan Lerman) as he navigates the social [...]

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Interview: End of Watch Star Michael Peña and Writer-Director David Ayers

As a screen writer, David Ayer made a name for himself in the early ’00s with high-octane, macho guy action scripts for Training Day, S.W.A.T., and The Fast & the Furious. Almost all of Ayer’s films (including 2005′s Harsh Times, which he wrote and directed, and 2008′s Street Kings which he directed) take place on [...]

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Interview: Dredd 3D Star Karl Urban

It’s understandable if some scratch and/or shake their heads over the need for (and wisdom of) a new Judge Dredd movie 17 years after Sylvester Stallone completely missed the point in 1995. But writer-producer and long-time Danny Boyle collaborator Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine) has come up with a gritty, stylish new [...]

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Interview: Compliance Writer-Director Craig Zobel

Written and directed by Craig Zobel, the tremendous psychological drama Compliance is based on a series of true crimes in which a man pretending to be a police officer “prank”-called fast-food restaurants. Over the phone, often over the course of hours, the caller used a mix of manipulation, coercion, flattery, and sometimes bullying to convince [...]

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Interview: For a Good Time Call… Star Ari Graynor, Co-star and Co-writer Lauren Miller, Co-writer Katie Anne Naylon, and Director Jamie Travis

When Katie Anne Naylon and Lauren Miller first met at college a decade ago, they couldn’t have known the basics of their experience (their completely different personalities and styles, Katie’s past work as a phone-sex operator) would inspire their co-authored For a Good Time Call… screenplay. The R-rated but charming raunch-com For a Good Time [...]

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Interview: Lawless’ Matt Bondurant, Author of The Wettest County in the World

In 2008, author Matt Bondurant published his second novel, The Wettest County in the World, a fictionalized historical account of his own grandfather and grand uncles’ real-life experiences as rural-Virginia moonshiners in the early 1930s. Bondurant based the novel on family stories and historical records from Franklin County, Virginia, about his grandfather Jack Bondurant and [...]

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Interview: ParaNorman’s Writer and Co-Director Chris Butler and Co-Director Sam Fell

It seems the world of animated features for children is forever growing more crowded, more competitive, louder, and more about marketing and studio brands than genuinely imaginative and entertaining works. But every year (a couple times, if we’re lucky) an animated film comes along that doesn’t pander to kids and fast-food toys and leaves grown up [...]

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Interview: Celeste and Jesse Forever’s Co-Writers and Co-Stars Rashida Jones and Will McCormack

These days, for the sake of promotion, it doesn’t hurt for a smaller indie film to have a “meet cute” story behind it. In the case of the alt-minded romantic comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever, the hook is that co-writers Rashida Jones (Parks and Recreation, Our Idiot Brother) and Will McCormack dated briefly but intensely [...]

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