“After Hours” is a decidedly un-Scorseseish Martin Scorsese film: a light, goofy and surreal comedy with no real stakes. And yet all that brilliant craft is on display, the muscular cinematic energy, the taste for danger and the vivid sense of place within New York City that’s so often his...
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Christy by Request
Hail, Caesar!
Universal Pictures Rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and smoking. Running time: 106 minutes. Three stars out of four. The Coen brothers — my favorite filmmakers, I should mention at the outset — have always been hit-and-miss when it comes to straight-up comedies. For every “Raising Arizona” or “The Big...
Read more5 Songs That Remind Me of Movies
I haven’t done one of these lists in a while, which is a bummer, because they’re always a lot of fun and they inspire spirited feedback. But when a dear childhood friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that he can’t hear the song “Just Once” by James Ingram without thinking...
Read more15 Films That Have Stayed With Me
There’s a fun challenge that’s been going around Facebook lately: Choose 15 films that have stayed with you throughout your life. One of the dads at school who’s become a friend of mine posed the challenge to me. Impossible, I thought at first. I write about movies for a living...
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