George Lucas

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Review: Red Tails

The struggles and triumphs of the Tuskegee Airmen
With a title that refers not to squirrels but to plane markings, Red Tails dramatizes the struggles and triumphs of African-American pioneers, the Tuskegee Airmen.
By BETSY SHERMAN | January 24, 2012

By | January 01, 0001

Freaks, Geeks, and Faux Bono

Boston-area subcultures keep the Bay State comfortably kooky this summer
As Bay Staters, we recognize that our European ancestors sure knew how to roll: scarlet letters, sticks up asses, if-she-drowns-she's-not-a-witch-if-she-floats-she's-a-witch-so-let's-kill-her legal applications.
By ALEXIS HAUK | June 20, 2010

Review: House

Alas, weirdness had to wait
Just imagine, after viewing Nobuhiko Obayashi’s bona fide genre find, how a generation of moviegoers’ tastes might have deviated in wonderfully odd directions had they sampled the Japanese visionary’s comic-horror hybrid back in 1977.
By BRETT MICHEL | April 28, 2010

Art in America

From the Old West to middle-class guys
The legend of the Old West's cowboys and Indians, flinty pioneers and buffalo killers, sheriffs and gunslingers started with the tall tales that cowboys themselves told of their glorious exploits.
By GREG COOK | June 19, 2009

After The Daytrippers . . .

Mottola explains
Greg Mottola didn't make a film for 11 years after his 1997 debut feature, The Daytrippers, caused a small ripple in the indie world.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 31, 2009

Review: Adventureland

Greg Mottola faces growing pains
Could the revival of the "Portrait of the Auteur As a Young Man" genre signal a new era of auteurship in Hollywood? Maybe, but Mottola, for one, hasn't quite reached that point.
By PETER KEOUGH | April 02, 2009

Fanboys

As endearingly grungy and careworn as the Mos Eisley cantina in the original, pre-digitized, puppets-and-all 1977 print of Star Wars
Bonus points to director Kyle Newman for upping Kristen Bell's already solid geek cred (and for squeezing her into Princess Leia's gold bikini).
By GARY SUSMAN | February 19, 2009

Review: Delgo

Somewhat less impressive than the Geico gecko
In a far-away animated land resembling Middle-earth by way of George Lucas's Clone Wars , two races clash over a common territory in a situation akin to the current conflict in the Middle East.
By TOM MEEK | December 16, 2008

Wish-fulfillment for a burning world

The 2008 heroic holiday DVD and Blu-ray gift guide
From the shining big-screen debut of Iron Man to the large amounts of green produced by the Incredible Hulk, this was the year the public couldn't get enough of their favorite heroes.
By BRETT MICHEL | December 11, 2008

Sith happens

No new lease on life for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Many people regard anything produced in the past 15 years or so bearing the Star Wars brand as total garbage, and rightly so.
By RYAN STEWART | September 23, 2008

Back to business

Fall video games offer sequels and few surprises
For the first time, the arrival of the blockbuster video-game season seems bittersweet.
By MITCH KRPATA | September 11, 2008

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

A stiffly-animated, money-grabbing afterthought
It is Star Wars , but it's also an ad for an upcoming video game and an animated TV series debuting in October.
By BRETT MICHEL | August 20, 2008

Not by George

Robot Chicken: Star Wars
A long time ago, on a bricks-and-mortar soundstage far, far away, the last great Star Wars movie was made.
By MIKE MILIARD | August 11, 2008

Numb Skull

Indiana Jones’s mild Kingdom
You can’t say they don’t warn you.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 22, 2008

Sydney White

An obvious, labored fairy tale
Joe Nussbaum’s created a genre mash-up, grafting on the plot of Revenge of the Nerds and . . . the climax of Spartacus ?
By BRETT MICHEL | September 19, 2007

Potter-schmotter!

25 fantasy films that lock horns, swords, and wands with Harry Potter
No reading required.
By ELLEE DEAN AND MADDY MYERS | July 24, 2007

Labyrinth

David Bowie in tights
Of course I imagined I was Jennifer Connelly.
By NINA MACLAUGHLIN | June 27, 2007

Cinema of Shadows

We’re five years into the Iraq crisis, and Hollywood hasn't made a film about the war. Or is every film is about the war?
It’s not likely, but Judd Apatow’s pitch for Knocked Up might have sounded something like this.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 06, 2007

Golden anniversary

The SF Film Fest turns 50
Happy 50th anniversary to the San Francisco Film Festival.
By GERALD PEARY | May 16, 2007

Place to buy books from a cat lady

Is that a 1977 copy of George Lucas’s Star Wars ? And over there . . . a stack of those choose-your-own adventure books you used to read as a kid?
By PHOENIX STAFF | February 23, 2010

The future of an illusion

Reflections on 40 years spent in the dark
When I first realized that movies would, for better or worse, dominate my imagination forever, I really gave no thought to the forces at work creating these transfiguring images on a screen.
By PETER KEOUGH | November 15, 2006

Off with their heads

Recent polls are giving the GOP the willies. So should the movies.
The signs are getting bleak for the man in the White House and the party in power.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 20, 2006

Small state, big stage

Steven Feinberg reveals how Rhode Island wound up on the Hollywood map
When some of his childhood friends in Cranston were starting to party, Steven Feinberg remained transfixed by the movies -- to the point where he envisioned one day serving as Rhode Island’s celluloid king.
By IAN DONNIS | August 02, 2006

EXTRAS! EXTRAS!

The 25 Greatest DVD Special Features of All Time
As much as I lament the continuing decline of attendance at the cineplex, it’s also easy to understand.
By BRETT MICHEL | April 25, 2006

Battlestar anime

Kurosawa’s classic becomes IFC’s Samurai 7 , plus more, but not better, Henry Rollins
Fans of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 epic The Seven Samurai , which spawned John Sturges’s 1960 The Magnificent Seven , are going to be surprised at what they find in Samurai 7 .
By BRETT MICHEL | March 30, 2006