A couple of young, white-trash lovers from Queens hatch a plot to solve their financial woes by targeting the mafia in Rob the Mob. Here we have one of those true stories that, as the saying goes, you couldn’t make up for fear of being laughed out of town. The story of Thomas Uva (Michael Pitt) […]
I grew up at the perfect time for the Muppets. I was a child when Sesame Street started airing on PBS, and The Muppet Show came a few years later with a whole new batch of characters that were better in many ways than the iconic creations on Sesame Street. The Muppets jumped to the […]
It’s a testament to the involvement that I felt in a movie about fast cars and racing that I left the theater and found myself pushing a little harder on the gas pedal. I’ll admit that Need for Speed had that effect on me, and so did some of the better movies in this genre, […]
An opportunistic concierge is framed for murder and sets out to clear his name in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Wes Anderson‘s latest quirky comedy is a powerful addition to his anthology of the absurd. If you’ve never encountered any of Anderson’s unique films, be forewarned that they’re somewhat of an acquired taste. His latest tale […]
A group of Palestinian friends are turned against each other while one searches for a path out in Omar. The West Bank wall creates not only a divide between people but also a demarcation point between perceptions and choices. Those on the Israeli side see the wall as a barrier against terrorism, while Palestinians on […]
A sly but well-meaning insurance salesman is spellbound by his attraction for the calculating wife of one of his clients in Double Indemnity. This classic film from 1944 is one of the 10 films that famed movie critic Roger Ebert asked me to watch as part of a discussion on the differences between various types […]
A highly motivated stockbroker rises from neophyte to Nero in The Wolf of Wall Street. With all the more recent news about Wall Street excess, it’s sometimes easy to forget the myriad of scandals that came before. In the ’80s and ’90s, we had crooks like Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky and, of course, the folks […]
I really like journeys to the past in movies, especially when they stop somewhere in the ‘70s or ‘80s. I’m sure that’s because of my age and my formative years taking place in those decades. (I still can’t imagine life back then or even college without some of the major conveniences like cell phones that […]
Two small-time con artists are forced to work for an egocentric FBI agent out to make his mark in American Hustle. It was October of 1972. I was eight years old when a man walked up to me on River Road in Camden, New Jersey. The man asked if I’d like to go to work […]
In recent months, Benedict Cumberbatch has taken on two iconic characters. In one movie, he plays an arrogant, creepy, powerful man with superhuman abilities, a deliberate way of speaking and an unusual look who wants to expose the lies of leaders in order to benefit his people and ultimately ends up confined to minimal living quarters […]
An outcast rogue hacker turns his skills to exposing the world’s biggest corporate and political secrets, ushering in a new era of information freedom in The Fifth Estate. This is the true-life story detailing the origins of one of the most powerful grassroots organizations the world has ever seen — WikiLeaks — and its founder, the quirky, […]
An American cargo ship is boarded by Somali pirates who take its captain hostage in the true-life tale of Captain Phillips. In April of 2009, the Maersk Alabama set sail from Oman, Jordan, with 17,000 metric tons of cargo bound for Mombasa, Kenya. Their route took them directly through an area where Somali pirates had been known […]