If we posit that a great film is both cinematography and story, EVEREST is not great as it does extremely well in the first area but fares poorly in the second. Obviously, Everest, the mountain, summit of the world, films magnificently. It is mighty, spectacular, awe-inspiring, frightening. It is both threatening and irresistible. Irresistible to the multitude striving to climb to the top or “summit,” to use their word.

Every Cannes Festival (and so, every festival) needs a good shoot-em-up movie. We got ours this year with SICARIO, starring Benicio Del Toro, Emily Blunt, and Josh Brolin in the supporting role. SICARIO's at-times lack of depth and the expeditious nature of certain plot twists make this solid revenge drama imperfect. But an extraordinary lensmanship by Roger Deakins and ominous, queasiness-inducing sound by Tom Ozanich complemented by the tense three-way tug-of-war between the characters played by Blunt, Del Toro and Brolin as they somehow try to work together to take out the top of a drug cartel is a joy to watch. SICARIO hasn't stayed with

In college I wrote a paper on the subversion of the detective novel in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. I got an A, although the paper received its highest compliment in 2009. That’s when Pynchon finally lived up to my astonishing insight and published a detective novel, “Inherent vice.” This survey of Los Angeles weirdness circa 1970 is brought to the screen by Paul Thomas Anderson. The Crying of Lot 49 features suburban housewife Oedipa Maas

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The comic book is to this age what shoot’em up […]