Review: "Good Boys"

by Tony Ruggio

Sixth grade, and middle school generally, is a confusing time. It’s a big transition for boys, from children who play to little teens who wannabe a playa, and not everybody’s in sync on the maturity scale. Good Boys is not merely a comedy about eleven year-olds cursing and thirsting for girls, it’s a mico-coming-of-age story about kids outgrowing each other, and trying desperately to stick together as a unit, as the “bean bag boys.” 

Max (Jacob Tremblay), Thor (Brady Noon), and Lucas (Keith Williams) are the only members, and they’ve been friends throughout grade school...

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Peter Fonda (1940-2019)

by Nathaniel R

Peter Fonda in "Ulee's Gold"

Peter Fonda was born Hollywood royalty, as the only son of classic movie star Henry Fonda. Like his iconic elder sister Jane, he had a tense relationship with his father. Unlike Jane he didn't have his own On Golden Pond (1981) to share with his father. Their only film together was the forgotten Wanda Nevada (1979). Not that Peter's career was without its own creative and commercial peaks. The film with which he'll always be associated, Easy Rider (1969), the counter-culture smash that he both co-wrote and co-starred in with Dennis Hopper, was both.

Because most career-retrospectives of Peter Fonda appear to begin and end with Easy Rider (1969) we thought it would be more interesting today to look at the way his career started and what happened after Easy Rider...

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Posterized: Where'd ya go with Richard Linklater?

by Nathaniel R

Richard Linklater directing Cate Blanchett on the set of "Where'd Ya Go, Bernadette?"

Richard Linklater, who burst on to the indie film scene as the voice of the "Slacker" generation, has had quite an eclectic career all told. He's made 19 theatrically released narrative features of a wide variety of genres and been instrumental in launching new stars (Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, and Miranda Cosgrove) or adding significant lustre and awards notices to other filmographies (Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Jack Black and Patricia Arquette chief among that list). The Austin-based filmmaker's latest is the adaptation of the best-seller Where'd Ya Go Bernadette. Cate Blanchett stars as the artist in self-imposed exile. 

Linklater's films have ranged from perfect gems to little seen oddities, director for hire gigs, weird and funny larks, remakes, misfires, and ambitious personal projects. How many of them have you seen? All 19 posters are after the jump...

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Review: Blinded By The Light

by Chris Feil

Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha brings us another earnest and heartwarming delight with Blinded By The Light, a true story of a Pakistani teenager transported out of his British suburb by the music of Bruce Springsteen. Javed (played by charming newcomer Viveik Kalra) is an outsider inside and outside his home: he can’t abide his father’s rigid cultural expectations and struggles to be taken seriously as writer in a white-dominated community. But the film also speaks to the political and economic concerns of its time period, depicting a lower-middle class world oppressed by Thatcher and the ensuing racist resurgence and capitalistic dominance.

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🎬 😣 🤳 🙏

by Jason Adams

I fear that in delivering this news I will be able to actually see the liver spots pop up on the tips of my typing fingers and travel with sudden immediacy up my arms -- something like a smaller version of that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the dude turns to a skeleton and dust in ten flat seconds. But throw all the "Old Man Yells At Clouds" memes at me you must, the news that Crawl director Alexandre Aja and producer Steven Spielberg -- who has recently made headlines about the sanctity of the movie-going experience, cough cough -- are teaming up to bring interactive-by-cell-phone "Choose Your Own Adventure" type storytelling to movie theaters makes my thin skin shudder and die...

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