Of all the dozens of Quentin Tarantino imitators to spring up since Pulp Fiction’s ass-backward 1994 cultural revolution, Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is the one to trade a serious reputation for trendy success. McDonagh’s stage plays limn the awkward, self-destructive tendencies of a marginalized group (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Cripple of Inishmore, A 
At this point in Ben Affleck’s directing career, I’d rather have him back simply as an actor (provided he’s well directed by someone who knows what the job entails). Affleck the auteur chooses worst material than Affleck the actor. And he lacks the skill and seriousness to make the stories believable. To read the full 
Political filmmaker Costa-Gavras (Z, Missing, The Confession) once said “If Americans are so free, why do you love escapist entertainment? What are you escaping from?” That question comes to mind every time a Luc Besson action movie opens here to negative reviews. To read the full review at City Arts click here 
‘WON’T BACK DOWN’ CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDUCATION CRISIS A dyslexic child looks into the camera at the end of Won’t Back Down and correctly pronounces a word she had previously stumbled over: “Hope.” Thank God for the smart-aleck in the audience who loudly responded: “Boo!” Whether or not that raspberry came from a member of 
THE TRICK AND TREAT OF HOLLYWOOD HALLOWEEN Tim Burton reaches the outer limits of creepy in Frankenweenie, the 3D remake of his 1984 animated short about a boy who plays Frankenstein and brings his dead dog Sparky back to life. That’s why it was a relief to step from that gothic cliché to the more 
A dyslexic child looks into the camera at the end of Won‘t Back Down and correctly pronounces a word she had previously stumbled over: “Hope.” Thank God for the smart-aleck in the audience who loudly responded: “Boo!” To read the full review at City Arts click here 
I’m Carolyn Parker must be categorized as a documentary since it is a nonfiction, slice-of-life account of a real person, but it transcends genre classification because it is really an extraordinary character study. To read the full article at City Arts click here 
Armond White’s Best Picks Best TV: Soul Food Roger Mooking’s new show Man Fire Food on the Cooking Channel has solved the soul-food riddle that has perplexed television’s new foodie culture. Mooking, a Canadian with an inviting grin, takes his culinary skill and infectious humor on the road, searching for new ways that assorted cooks 
Resident Evil has fun with 3D, The Master makes fun of religion Compare the unoriginal use of 3D in Hugo–standard diorama compositions with objects poking out toward the viewer–to Paul W.S. Anderson’s astonishingly lively 3D compositions in Resident Evil: Retribution where heroine Alice (Milla Jovovich) fights the Umbrella Corporation’s viral experiments that produced a plague turning mankind into zombies. Anderson’s images 
