Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man and the Pool

May 18, 2017 — Loveless is “two hours of gorgeously gloomy existential despair courtesy of the well-regarded Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev,” writes Justin Chang in the Los Angeles Times. “Often touted as an heir to Tarkovsky, Russian cinema’s other famously austere Andrey, Zvyagintsev previously...

May 9, 2012 — The paradox of the biopic is that the need to give fictional characters the kind of messy, defining behavior that makes them ring true—makes them, in the vocabulary of development, “relatable”—is usually overlooked when an actual life is condensed into...

Sep 27, 2021 — Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand star in Coen’s first feature as a solo director.

Sep 24, 2021 — Joanna Hogg, Terence Davies, and Lynne Ramsay look back on their days in film school; and Bill Morrison issues a warning.

Mar 2, 2018 — “This was a singular experience,” writes novelist Walter Mosley, who’s revisited Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night (1967) and turns in a powerful piece in the Hollywood Reporter. On the one hand, the “belief in the North as...

Jul 19, 2017 — The Tracking Board’s Jeff Sneider broke the news and Variety’s Justin Kroll confirms it. Steven Soderbergh has secretly shot a film with Claire Foy and Juno Temple on an iPhone. The title seems to be all that’s known about it...

Jul 12, 2011 — Heeeere’s Johnny, the desperate, destructive prophet-of-the-apocalypse protagonist of Mike Leigh’s brilliantly corrosive Naked (1993), a sexually explicit update to a long line of British films, plays, and novels about angry young men. Johnny might be mistaken for a mere misanthrope,...

Oct 7, 2015 — It’s night in the desert. Mike (River Phoenix), a teenage hustler given to bouts of narcolepsy, and Scott (Keanu Reeves), a slumming preppy prince, are huddled over a campfire. “I just want to kiss you, man,” says Mike softly. The...

Dennis Perrin is the author of Mr. Mike: The Life and Work of Michael O'Donoghue, The Man Who Made Comedy Dangerous (Avon Books) and American Fan: Sports Mania and the Culture That Feeds It (Spike/HarperCollins).

Sep 30, 2021 — Fresh out of luck in Texas City, a fast-talking porn star aims to get back to LA.