The Peanuts and Popcorn Podcast features weekly conversations about film, television and sports. Jake Kring-Schreifels and Taylor Armosino jump right into Amy Schumer’s star vehicle Trainwreck and are not as thrilled with the […]
Very early on in Chappie, Sigourney Weaver, playing the head of a private defense company, shoots down funding a robot that can recite poetry and paint pictures. It’s a brutal […]
Song One During her week of promotion for Song One, Anne Hathaway stopped by The Daily Show to chat with Jon Stewart. Quickly they were dying in laughter. She zipped out a condensed version […]
No City For Oil Men A Most Violent Year begins with Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues.” The song, like the film it introduces, is chilling and soulful. Gaye recorded it […]
They Snuffed His Pooch, Now It’s Time For Payback John Wick is a preposterous revenge movie, but it revels in its own preposterousness. That makes it difficult to judge this popcorn […]
A Wife Missing, A Husband Squirming Near the beginning of Gillian Flynn’s novel “Gone Girl,” a husband wakes up on his fifth wedding anniversary and overhears his wife humming the […]
In the new film, God Help The Girl, a practitioner at a mental health hospital diagrams what she terms a “Pyramid of Life.” Items like food, water, and sleep, she […]
On the intimacies of love, families, and New York City In Love is Strange, director Ira Sachs has at once written a love letter to lower Manhattan and also exposed […]
An Unlikely Pair with an Unlikely Sound When Keira Knightley’s character Greta, a tomboy-dressed Brit, performs an original song during an open-mic night, a music producer named Dan (Mark Ruffalo) […]
Clashing Cultures to Change their Fate In X-Men Days of Future Past, New York City is not blown up or destroyed. Well, that’s not entirely true. For a brief opening […]
Zapping Webs, Containing Trouble Spiderman 2, the middle adventure in Sam Raimi’s groundbreaking trilogy, begins with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) racing through jammed Manhattan streets with Pizza strapped to his […]
Love is Strange In Love is Strange, director Ira Sachs has at once written a love letter to lower Manhattan and also exposed its economically demanding realities. Ben (John Lithgow) […]
Folk Singer Searching For A Platform At certain points in time, from certain perspectives, the world can be a cold, dark place. Leave it to the Coen Brothers to use […]
Twenty Years Trapped, Free to Find the Truth Oldboy is an adaptation directed by Spike Lee. I mention this from the very start because if no ending credits appeared on […]
High-Tech Hunk Caught Between Bitter Rivals Early on through Paranoia, a lifeless, conventional and disappointing movie from Robert Luketic, Gary Oldman says, “Nothing original is left in the world.” His […]
A Yin and Yang Fighting and Painting With Love In a certain respect, film is the best medium to really capture artists Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, the weathered, adorable, frustrating, […]
Cutie and the Boxer is Zachary Heinzerling’s marvelous directorial debut and a rare dual portrait of artistic souls, Ushio and Noriko Shinohara. The title refers to Noriko’s illustrated journal of her life with […]
James Mangold and Hugh Jackman discuss influences for new film I got the opportunity to attend The Wolverine press conference in New York City and hear from director James Mangold and […]
Pomp and Circumstance in Long Island F. Scott Fitzgerald walked out of the theater when his timeless piece of American literature was adapted for the first time into a silent […]
A Painting Is Gone and So Is His Memory Before the New York City premiere of Trance, director Danny Boyle introduced the film, flanked by stars Rosario Dawson and Vincent […]
Pedal Pusher Biking up the Wrong Street Crowded streets, tight escapes, and heavy pedal action speedily wedge their way through Premium Rush, an often-unexposed peek at two-wheeled manual transportation. I say […]
