Arts & Culture

Movie stars shouldn’t be subject to the rules of gravity, as we mere mortals are. One of the great pleasures of watching actors is to see them move, and when yesterday’s youngsters start creaking, we feel it in our joints. That’s not to say actors can’t age gracefully, or that…

If there’s one nuance mainstream comedies have yet to learn, it’s that “empathetic” need not mean “likable” — audiences can feel for characters they don’t necessarily want to be. The hit black comedy Horrible Bosses, which had three angry underlings plotting murderous vengeance against their you-know-whats, should have been a…

Hey, Hollywood can still do romance! Even since the marketeers worked out that the kiss kiss bang bang formula could be profitably split, with bang bang movies getting wide releases and the kiss kisses sold only to that slim niche demographic called “American women,” movie love stories had gotten frustratingly…

How would those Bronze Age storytellers who shaped and handed down the myths of Ancient Greece fare in a modern screenwriting seminar? All that elusive, improvisatory strangeness, that alien sense of causality, that emphasis on origins, not just of franchisable characters but of everything in the natural world, right down…

You can guess the plot of Disney’s Planes — it’s just Cars 2 with wings, an international romp that pits a humble country bumpkin against a fleet of literally jet-setting competitors in a race around the world. With pit stops in four continents, more cultural stereotypes than the Eurovision song…

This article contains major spoilers. A white suburban teen, urged on by friends, makes the decision to finally get laid, maybe by the end of summer. That’s the premise of Sixteen Candles, American Pie, Superbad, and now The To Do List. Comedy pin-up Aubrey Plaza gives a characteristically low-wattage performance…

When David Gordon Green introduced Paul Rudd to Emile Hirsch, the two actors didn’t click. It was an awkward seafood dinner. “Emile just started talking about something — girls, maybe — and I was doing a piss-poor job of trying to follow along,” recalls Rudd. “And when Emile got up…

Here’s something you would think we could all agree on: Rigid parts of the body probably shouldn’t go slack. But try asking a SeaWorld spokesperson about the drooping dorsal fins on so many of the park chain’s performing male orca, about that mighty Alfalfa spike that in the wild juts…

Here’s a humble wig-out, a curio that could endure beyond its creators’ more demonstrably successful works — and for decades will certainly confound audiences who think they’re streaming/torrenting/eye-jacking some broad Paul Rudd comedy they had forgotten about. Prince Avalanche director David Gordon Green gives star Rudd more chances to charm…

In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009, on a platform of Oakland’s Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit Station, a young man named Oscar Grant III was shot in the back by a BART transit officer. The officer later claimed that he meant to reach for his Taser and…