2013 has been the summer of vulgar auteurism (VA), a critical catch phrase blooming around the online film sphere. "White House Down" comes at a perfect time.

VA is a recent critical movement that seeks respect for movies (particularly action movies) that don’t scream “artsy.” Inspired by the French New Wave reconsideration of Howard Hawks and Hollywood B-movies

"World War Z" may be the first film in which the cast exceeds the actual population of the planet. There are huge citywide vistas of rambling crowds. Most of these people are infected with a zombie virus that turns them into rattlesnakes with overbites and clammy hair.

These elements pay off quickly in a fantastic opener set in a traffic jam in downtown Philadelphia. Amid startling car-smashing, Brad

During one of the tamer scenes of “Cleopatra” Elizabeth Taylor’s Queen of the Nile leads Julius Caesar to the tomb of Alexander the Great. Staring down at the (pretend) grave of Western Civilization’s greatest conqueror, what could Taylor be thinking? Is she thinking “Amateur!”? What Alexander tried and failed to take with force – the entire world – Taylor was accomplishing that moment with overwhelming fame and

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the billion-dollar staple of American high-school reading. At times, watching Baz Luhrmann’s fantasy “The Great Gatsby” feels like reliving the entire length of junior year. At other times, it reaches out to the green light and snatches what it’s after: a mad dream of one of America’s essential novels.

"The Great Gatsby" by Baz Luhrmann is exactly like what

In a movie where flying metal meets flying metaphors, “Iron Man 3” is like rooting for a good hammer. Billionaire playboy industrialist Tony Stark makes it possible to pilot a fleet of Iron Man outfits by remote control, while he munches In’N’Out burgers miles away. “Iron Man” has become “Iron Drone.” The real metaphor here is the empty suit. Among the faithful, that change won’t lead to tears for teenage theater hands to soak

Here’s a topic for sitting around the campfire: are the worst films by the best directors still better than 80% of what is released? Are say, "Bringing Out the Dead" or "The Hudsucker Proxy" still relative carrots for the eyes when compared to the "Transformer" movies? Terrence Malick’s "To the Wonder" is a lot more "The Prairie Home Companion" than "McCabe and Mrs. Miller." Following in the wake of his towering

Things begin in the sixties in Robert Redford’s "The Company You Keep." A group of radicals rob a bank in Michigan. The ringleader, shown in dusty old FBI wanted posters, looks remarkably like The Sundance Kid. Who are those guys? That’s the question the Feds are asking, and they have asked for more than thirty years. More accurately, where are those guys? The robbers long ago blended into America. When one surrenders

I should be describing “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” to let you know the positives and negatives of the latest Steve Carell mass-market comedy. But watching it, all I could wonder was, whatever happened to Steve Buscemi and the Coen Brothers? At one time he was arguably the foremost actor associated with the reticent Minnesota siblings, playing roles in all five of their features in the nineties. Then it suddenly stopped. Why? Obviously there wouldn’t appear to be a rift, a falling out, as he starred in their segment of “Paris, Je t’aime.” They just suddenly quit. Was it money? A desire to try new

It’s been an interesting few months for history on film. A series of releases have raised the ever-present question of historical depiction. One film, "Zero Dark Thirty," was threatened with Congressional investigations over its portrayal of torture. "Argo" takes vast liberties with the Iranian hostage crisis, but no one except the Iranians seems to mind. No film is quite as dependent on history as "Emperor," a serviceable feature film that

Poor Jason Bateman. Nothing good ever happens to him. He doesn’t get to be Seth Rogen dishing out one liners. His form of comedy involves being the average guy taking abuse – punches, stomps, bites, and the rest of it. No one takes a kick to the groin quite like Jason Bateman. He’s a little like a modern Jack Lemmon, the normal man beset by his circumstances. In “Identity Thief “– aside from the obvious theft of his identity – he suffers throat