Who’s the boss? No need to ask that question after seeing “The September Issue.” It’s Anna Wintour’s world – the rest of us are just accessories.
Wintour, in case you’ve been hibernating from the media for the past 20 years, is queen of the universe – or, rather, the fashion universe. Which appears to have as much to do with the real universe as Spongebob does to the plight of the dolphin.
But Wintour – she of the shield-like sunglasses, social x-ray physique and icy demeanor – rules nonetheless. As editrix of American Vogue, she’s Yertle the Turtle for fashionistas.
R.J. Cutler’s documentary, “The September Issue,” follows the creation of the annual issue of Vogue that – well, I don’t know, I guess it contains nuclear codes, the key to reversing global warming, the secrets of alchemy – something serious like that. (More…)
Paul Aufiero is a sports nut. Or to be more accurate, a New York Giants nut.
He eats, sleeps and breathes the Giants. The rest of his life may be depressingly mundane, but as long as the Giants are playing – and winning – all is right with the world. Everything else is just time spent waiting for the next game.
It would be easy to pigeonhole Paul (Patton Oswalt), the central character In Robert Siegel’s new film, “Big Fan,” as a loser. He lives with his mother on Staten Island, works a crappy job as a parking-garage attendant and takes grief from his siblings about his lack of ambition in life.
But Siegel’s acid dramatic comedy resists judging Paul. (More…)
Ang Lee’s “Taking Woodstock” is as unlikely and enjoyable a memento of that long-gone moment in the age of Aquarius as we’re likely to find in this 40th anniversary year of the epochal rock festival.
Based on a memoir by writer Elliot Tiber (whose name was Teichberg when the events in the film occurred), the film celebrates one lone little man with the vision and the nerve to seize a moment and help make Woodstock happen. Without Teichberg, there might not have been a Woodstock – as simple as that. (More…)
Bobcat Goldthwait’s stand-up comedy has always caught the edge of that fine line between laughing at jokes and laughing at a comedian who might very well be having a breakdown or a seizure – or something worse.
His films walk a similar tightrope – or at least the last two do. On the heels of 2007’s “Sleeping Dogs Lie” comes “World’s Greatest Dad,” an even more accomplished – and squirm-inducing – dark comedy than its predecessor. (More…)
I can’t decide whether it helps or hurts to go into “My One and Only” with the knowledge that the teen-age character of George Devereaux, played by Logan Lerman, will eventually grow up to become George Hamilton.
It’s not as if it’s a secret; Hamilton’s name is in the opening credits. He published his autobiography earlier this year, “Don’t Mind If I Do,” which included some of these same stories. (More…)
Having come through eight years of the Bush administration, during which youthful political resistance seemed like a banished concept, it’s both bracing and frightening to be reminded of what it can be like by Uli Edel’s “The Baader-Meinhof Complex.” (More…)
Some people have trouble connecting with their inner child.
Filmmaker Robert Rodriguez has the opposite problem: He can’t let go of the 8-year-old within.
How else to explain the segment of his newest film, “Shorts,” devoted to a battle between little kids and a giant walking booger? How else to explain “Shorts” itself? (More…)
Just as “Passing Strange” was much more than a staged concert when it played on Broadway, Spike Lee’s film of “Passing Strange” is far more than just a document of the stage performance.
Yes, Lee filmed the final show of the Tony-winning musical’s Broadway run. But this film takes you so far inside the work that you never feel the distance that an audience member would feel sitting in the audience watching the stage. He makes this a movie, not a filmed play. (More…)
No matter what you imagine Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” is going to be, think again.
OK, yes, Tarantino’s film is a World War II thriller with scenes of gruesome violence. But anyone who comes in expecting – or hoping – that the action defines the film will be wrong. (More…)
Given his body of work to date, it’s easy to dismiss Ashton Kutcher as a lite comic actor (as opposed to an actor in light comedies), who hit his groove in mindless early 21st-century throwaways a la “Dude Where’s My Car” and “What Happens in Vegas.”
But as he showed earlier this year in the little-seen “Personal Effects” – and as he demonstrates again in the new “Spread” – Kutcher is an actor with range. “Spread” may not amount to much but Kutcher will change perceptions of who he is as an actor for anyone who sees it. (More…)
