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The funniest scene in Hail, Caesar! is a microcosm of the film’s overall genius. Foppish British director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Fiennes) tries to get Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich), a singin’ and dancin’ cowboy movie star, to deliver a single line of dialogue in a refined, “rueful” way. They repeat the line back and forth to […]

At the end of the first Iron Man, when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) popped up to mention “The Avengers Initiative,” it launched what can only be described as the most massive collective nerdgasm in this or any quantum parallel reality. Since then, there have been minor nerdquake aftershocks (seeing the team together for the […]

There are many things I don’t understand: quantum mechanics, car commercials, who put the bomp in the bomb bah bomp bah bomp. But chief among the perplexing unsolvables to me remains how people who loved writer/director Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy don’t like the current Hobbit series. Better acted, more personal and possessed […]

Just as the short story trembles in the footprint of the novel, the short film plays David to feature-length film Goliaths. But with the help of shiny, naked bald men, these wee bits of cinematic splendor step from the shadows and sling their short shots. And in the 12 years I’ve had the pleasure of […]

The 2013 Oscar-nominated Shorts sizzle Ryan Syrek Outside of the unspeakable fame and groupies, the best part of being a movie critic is getting a peek at stuff you may otherwise never see. One of my favorite annual traditions is checking out what the Academy felt were little films worthy of a little guy made […]

Let’s give it up for the ladies. Once the purview of mustachioed men with Italian last names, the “cops and crooks” movie genre has flung open the doors to the clubhouse. Last year gave us several films in the genre with strong female leads instead of damsel-in-distress love interests. Playing an Aussie-accented version of The […]