Wes Anderson and the Old Regime
With The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson has reached the dizzying point of fantasizing about feeling nostalgic for nostalgia itself.
Crocodile Tears of the Wolf
The Wolf of Wall Street’s eleventh hour Hail Mary doesn’t atone for the rest of the film’s gleeful celebration of rich assholes.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (1967 – 2014)
To see Philip Seymour Hoffman even in films that you hated was to come away awed.
Regrounding Hollywood
Gravity points us back to the silent era’s “sensation cinema.”
The Great American Losers
Unlike other American directors, Joel and Ethan Coen have always been interested in depicting failure.
Thor 2 is a Cinematic McDonald’s Cheeseburger
You deserve better hamburgers than this.
The Fantastic Failure of The Lone Ranger
At least Verbinski tries to bring intelligent, politically-savvy revisionist westerns back into style.
They Shoot Oscars, Don’t They?
The Oscar ceremony has finally acquired an ideal twenty-first century host in the smirking, tap-dancing, bland-faced Seth MacFarlane.
Eileen Jones
Eileen Jones is a film critic at Jacobin and author of the book Filmsuck, USA. She teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.