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Nowadays, everything needs an origin story…even a TV show. Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which takes place in real-time during the night of October 11, 1975 in and around Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, mixes fact, fiction, mythology, and...

(Spoilers, but hey, it’s 40 years old!)Many movies look much different when watched years after their release but few have aged in quite the way that Saturday Night Fever has. When the movie first debuted in the winter of 1977, it rode the rising...

Savages is a drug-fueled crime delirium that doesn't break much new ground in the genre but offers a volatile concoction of violence, heroism, and amorality that is compulsively watchable. The director is Oliver Stone, a filmmaker often associated ...

The Savages is being described in some corners as a "dark comedy," but such a designation does a great disservice to Tamara Jenkins' picture. This is not a comedy but a drama. To the extent that there is humor, it emerges from the uncomfortable s...

Save the Last Dance, a movie about finding salvation on the dance stage, takes a little Pygmalion, a little Romeo and Juliet, and a lot of formula, wraps them up with a neat bow, and delivers a passably entertaining package. The film stumbles not ...

For an author of long-form fiction, the writing process isn't merely technical. As absurd as it might seem, the writer bonds with his or her characters to the point where they can become as "real" as any flesh-and-blood person. This is especially t...

Devastating. If, for some reason, I was asked to write a one-word review of Saving Private Ryan, that would be the term I would use. As was true of director Steven Spielberg's other masterpiece, Schindler's List, the impact of this motion pic...

The dumb, raunchy comedy is not a new genre - in one form or another, it's far older than cinema. (What else would one call Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales?) However, as far as the modern incarnation is concerned, its genesis can be traced back to...

Saw is for hard-gore horror aficionados only. To appreciate Saw in its full gory, you have to have a penchant for productions that bask in the traditions of the Grand Guignol. While most of the film relies more on psychological tension and terror...

Horror films are like candy corn: familiar, bland, and sickening if consumed in large quantities. They're both ubiquitous at this time of year and there must be a large group of individuals who appreciate their dubious charms because they never go ...