Oct 03, 2014
Out of Frame: Gone Girl
The movie is a bleak if superficial story of a marriage gone bad, and a movie about storytelling.
Daredevil and The Green Hornet will uses their Senate testifying super powers at two different hearings on Wednesday.
Apr 12, 2013
Out of Frame: To the Wonder
Terence Malick’s latest asks big questions, but it drowns in the muddy waters of his own unquestioned aestheticism.
Oct 12, 2012
Out of Frame: Argo
With his third film behind the camera, Ben Affleck shows real growth as a director, turning in a smart movie that is tense, unnerving and still plenty of fun.
Jan 21, 2011
Out of Frame: The Company Men
In 1940, John Ford made the definitive film about American life during the Great Depression, taking John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and adapting it into a poignant statement on a people attempting to rise to the challenges of economic collapse — and often falling short. What made that work so timeless wasn’t its attention to the larger economic and political issues at hand; it was the commitment to telling an effective small-scale story about this one family, keeping the big picture ever-present, but in the margins. The opposite side of the coin when trying to make a statement through your film is that the story takes a backseat to the sermon, and the movie becomes a series of bulleted talking points. For example: The Company Men.
Sep 17, 2010
Out of Frame: The Town
After Ben Affleck’s career free-fall last decade, who would have predicted that he would have had such a remarkable artistic resurgence, much less that it would be driven by his work behind the camera rather than in front of it? In The Town, Affleck builds on the smart, unselfish directorial skill he demonstrated in Gone Baby Gone with yet another solid, Boston-based crime thriller. Only this time, he spends time on both sides of the lens — and shows that his easy confidence in the director’s chair is seeping into his performances as well.
Mar 11, 2008
Two Big Movies Shooting in D.C.
The pretty people are descending upon our city. A couple big movie shoots are in town, so if you’re into that sort of thing, now’s your chance for an Affleck or LaBeouf sighting. State of Play, an adaptation of a BBC miniseries starring Russell Crow and Ben Affleck, has been shooting for a couple of days around Capitol Hill. This movie made headlines in the fall when Brad Pitt dropped out due to an inability…
Oct 26, 2007
Out of Frame: 30 Days of Night
This review was written by guest poster Eric Nuzum, a local pop culture commentator and author of The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula. Here’s the reason why there have been more than 600 vampire films produced in the past 85 years: Vampires are the perfect metaphor. Tradition says that vampires don’t cast reflections. But vampires are, in fact, reflections of what terrifies or titillates us, as well as what we…
Jun 01, 2007
Falls Church High School to be Afflecked
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner are in town today, thanks to Affleck having agreed to be the commencement speaker at Falls Church High School. The WaPo explains that the actor agreed to lend an unusual amount of starpower to the high school graduation ceremony thanks to his friendship with Falls Church senior Joe Kindregan. Kindregan and Affleck met when the actor was filming 1998’s Forces of Nature at Dulles Airport. Kindregan has ataxia-telangiectasia, a rare…
Feb 21, 2007
National Air and Space Museum Sad, Lonely
Our friends over at the Associated Press have dug deep into a story that’s weighing heavily on all of our minds today: Why is it that the National Air and Space Museum, once the proud champion of the Smithsonian’s annual Awesomest Awards for Attendance, has fallen from favor with the museum-attending set. Air and Space’s attendance fell below that of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History for the first time in recent memory last…