The word ”asshole” reverberated throughout New York’s Film Forum as the press screening of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector, which plays there through July 13, ended. As…
Bob Cashill
489 Articles
An Editorial Board Member of Cineaste magazine, Bob is also a member of the Drama Desk theatrical critics society in New York. See what he's watching on Letterboxd and read more from him at New York Theater News.
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
Birds of a feather flock together this week, as I pull from the stacks two recent releases that a) have our feathered friends in their titles, b) are psychological thrillers,…
Bob Cashill
16 Min Read
Once again Popdose didn’t send me to Cannes, and I imagine Toronto, Venice, and Telluride are off my itinerary. (If you think it should, start a Facebook campaign, or Twitter….
Bob Cashill
7 Min Read
”Someone explain to me why everyone believes in an impending zombie apocalypse,” requested George A. Romero of the crowd gathered to meet him at a recent sold-out screening of his…
Bob Cashill
7 Min Read
Is ”I didn’t mind it too much” sufficient criticism of a $200 million dollar behemoth? Probably not for the front office, which demand that we be a little more forthcoming…
Bob Cashill
7 Min Read
”Aging Gen-Xer Doesn’t Find Bad Movies Funny Anymore” read a headline in The Onion last year, and, no joke, it might as well have been about me. I don’t find…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
Last week, Hit Girl. This week, Hit Pensioner, as Michael Caine mows ’em down as Harry Brown. This is familiar territory for Caine, whose nasty gangland thriller Get Carter still…
Bob Cashill
9 Min Read
With January and February showing signs of life over the last two years April is now the pre-summer season dumping ground for the also-rans, the never-weres, and The Losers. Furry…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
He’s 40 going on 41. Coming off a breakdown. Underemployed, perhaps unemployable. Convinced in the absolute rightness of his convictions and the utter wrongness of yours. Believes wholeheartedly in Dorothy…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
Flicks don’t get any more testicular than 1999’s The Boondock Saints, a Beantown-flavored slab of Tarantino attitude that emerged as a minor cult hit. The sequel, with the marquee-hogging title…
Bob Cashill
5 Min Read
I first saw Michael Sheen in his native England, in a 1999 National Theatre revival of John Osborne’s ”angry young man” play Look Back in Anger. I’d heard that he…
Bob Cashill
7 Min Read
The Wizard of Oz has influenced every movie made since it opened in 1939, or so I’ve read. Off the top of my head I’m not so sure: On the…
Bob Cashill
2 Min Read
One of the few upsets at this year’s tepid Academy Awards was Precious beating Up in the Air for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film had won scripting awards from the…
Bob Cashill
2 Min Read
Note to self: Sentiment outranks everything else when picking a Best Foreign Language Film winner in the Oscar pool. I’m not-so-secretly pleased that the stone-cold, auteurist-approved White Ribbon didn’t blue-ribbon…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
The Forbidden Kingdom (2008) paired Jackie Chan and Jet Li in the nick of time. Two years later 55-year-old Chan is playing the Mr. Miyagi part in the Karate Kid…
Bob Cashill
7 Min Read
Almost three years ago to the day I posted on my blog an open letter to my long-time crush object Sandra Bullock. The news was not good. Read on… Dear…
Bob Cashill
5 Min Read
”Film culture today,” I muttered, as I waded through (and into) an unusually bothersome post on the usually half-annoying (but compulsively readable) Hollywood Elsewhere site. Look: It’s OK not to…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The documentarian who co-produced The War Room enters the battlefield of fashion with Vogue editor Anna (“Nuclear”) Wintour in The September Issue, out on DVD.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
I have a Clint Eastwood problem. But a new mega-set of his movies, Clint Eastwood: 35 Films 35 Years at Warner Bros., obliges me to take the long view. This…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
Solid craftsmanship disguises some rickety timber in The House of the Devil. Writer/director/editor Ti West says in one of the DVD’s two commentary tracks that he had Polanski and Kubrick…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
Roberto Rossellini’s status as a father of neorealism is eclipsed by his notoriety as the father of Isabella Rossellini. His adulterous affair with Ingrid Bergman in the 50s touched off…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
“It doesn’t get any easier trying to bring these characters to life,” says the star of the Oscar-nominated Coen brothers film, out now on DVD.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
From Avatar to the Transformers sequel, from Up in the Air to the depths of Obsessed, a look back at the highs and lows of 2009 as awards season takes shape.
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
1984 was a great year for foreign-language and independent cinema in the U.S. Off the top of my head I can recall seeing the following at Chicago’s Fine Arts Theater,…
Bob Cashill
9 Min Read
If the Oscars are truly serious about slimming down the Academy should just mail Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique their supporting performer awards. Or hand them over at next Tuesday’s nominations…
Bob Cashill
4 Min Read
Giant insects were all the rage in the nuclear-obsessed 50s—the king-sized ants of Them! (1954) led to an all-out assault of creepy-crawlies, with Tarantula (1955), The Black Scorpion (1957), The…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
You’d think that with all the miracles that CGI is capable of someone in Hollywood would figure out what to do with Bruce Willis’ hair. In Surrogates, out today on…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
By the early 80s Robert Altman was at an impasse in Hollywood. The success of MASH (1970) and Nashville (1975) was mitigated by numerous critical and/or financial flops, including Quintet…
Bob Cashill
6 Min Read
Over the holidays I read Robert Sellers’ Hellraisers, whose subtitle, ”The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed” pretty much tells you what…
Bob Cashill
3 Min Read
Some stage plays and musicals are adapted into films. Others are simply filmed. That would seem to be the easier gig—but if you’ve suffered through one where the camera never…