People often ask me if, after all these years of covering entertainment, there’s a celebrity I was especially nervous to interview. It wasn’t a superstar like Chris Evans or Penelope Cruz. It wasn’t an influential filmmaker like Clint Eastwood or Noah Baumbach. (Although I will say that Tommy Lee Jones...
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Revisiting
Revisiting The Sound of Music
That ear-splitting, glass-shattering sound you hear is me, yodeling. I’ve been doing it for the past several days, ever since I took Nicolas to see “The Sound of Music,” and I can’t stop. It’s fun and it drives my kid nuts, which provides an extra layer of enjoyment. I’ve seen...
Read moreRevisiting Ice Castles
If you were a little girl in the 1970s like I was, you probably loved “Ice Castles” and watched it a million times — whether or not you’d ever actually set foot on the ice yourself. You know that aspiring figure-skating champion Lexie Winston (Lynn-Holly Johnson) is going to take...
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Revisiting Shia LaBeouf
You may have heard that Shia LaBeouf has been doing this nutty thing — er, art project — in which he’s going back and rewatching all his movies, in reverse order, for three days straight at the Angelika Film Center in New York. The project even has a hashtag:...
Read moreRevisiting Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Tonight, I will take my 5 1/2-year-old son to see “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.” (He’ll enjoy the pratfalls. Please don’t call Child Protective Services on me.) Sony wouldn’t screen it for review before opening day, so we’re going to a 7:30pm showing with a bunch of my critic friends...
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Revisiting The Breakfast Club
Any self-respecting child of the ’80s loves John Hughes and knows at least one of the writer-director’s films by heart. While “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” are a total blast, the Hughes movie that mattered to me most growing up was “The Breakfast Club,” and it remains one...
Read moreRevisiting Five Most — Great ’80s Soundtracks
In a very cool bit of music news, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” soundtrack has topped the Billboard 200 chart this week. The 12-song mix of late-1960s and early-’70s tunes ranges from David Bowie and The Runaways to 10cc and the Jackson 5, and the inspired way director James Gunn...
Read moreRevisiting Five Most — Nicolas Cage Performances
Tonight, Chris and I are attending The Nicolas Cage Party Los Angeles, an art exhibit downtown which could be incredibly strange and wonderful (like Cage himself). This got me thinking about a Five Most list I did of his best performances back in January 2011. Which films would you pick?...
Read moreRevisiting Clint Eastwood’s Favorite Clint Eastwood Films
Clint Eastwood’s big-screen version of the smash Broadway musical “Jersey Boys” debuted in theaters this weekend. It’s not the best film he’s directed and it’s not the worst. As I said in my two-star review, it’s very glossy and entertaining as it traces the origins of the ’60s pop group...
Read moreRevisiting Rango
Damn, I love “Rango” so much. It is absolutely gorgeous: vividly detailed, wildly colorful and thrillingly inventive from start to finish, even as it pays homage to such classic and eclectic films as “Chinatown,” “Apocalypse Now” and Clint Eastwood’s spaghetti Westerns. I had the pleasure of revisiting the 2011 animated...
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