Movie ballyhoo is in good shape this Halloween season. The made-for-$10,000 Paranormal Activity has become a runaway hit, thanks to clever Internet marketing. ”Chaos reigns” T-shirts are being hawked (or…
Bob Cashill
504 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
1 Min Read
One of my favorite moviegoing experiences occurred when I lived in San Jose, CA, and decided one weeknight to see Lars von Trier’s Zentropa (1991). The Danish filmmaker and provocateur…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Michelle Pfeiffer was an Academy Award nominee for Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988), for which screenwriter Christopher Hampton took home a statuette. But I don’t expect literary adaptation lightning to…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
At long last, Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are arrives in theaters this weekend. Did Bob Cashill have a wild rumpus at his screening, or did he send Jonze to bed without supper?
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Nick Hornby’s been a busy man lately — not only does he have a new book out, but he penned the screenplay for this coming-of-age drama, which is already earning Oscar buzz for star Carey Mulligan.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Writer/director David Mamet and co-star William H. Macy have a good time reminiscing on the commentary track that accompanies the Criterion Collection edition of Homicide (1991). This “cop movie that…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The 47th annual edition of the New York Film Festival kicks off tonight at Lincoln Center. Except for last year’s paternity leave I’ve attended every one since 1994. Back before…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
In the HBO/BBC co-production Into the Storm, a visibly moved Winston Churchill (played, in an Emmy-winning performance, by Brendan Gleeson) screens his favorite movie, That Hamilton Woman (1941), for guests….
Bob Cashill
2 Min Read
There aren’t many bankable stars at the movies in 2009 — but Meryl Streep is one of the last ones standing, and as Bob Cashill notes, she’s earned her stature.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Few genres are as absorbent as film noir. Science fiction (Blade Runner), horror (Seven), and high school movies (Brick) have soaked up the world-weary, hard-boiled attitudes and atmospherics of Double…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Bob Cashill helps bring Beatles Week to its spine-tingling conclusion with a look at the Fab Four at the movies — after they broke up, of course. Give our regards to Broad Street, would you?
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Summer’s over, and it’s got Bob Cashill in a reflective mood as he looks back on what worked — and what didn’t — at the cinema this blockbuster season.
Bob Cashill
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A 201-minute Belgian film described as a “domestic 2001” could inspire reams of pretentious criticism, but I found Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) pretty easy to…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
I should cut Whit Stillman some slack. He got his start as a feature filmmaker at age 38 with the acclaimed Metropolitan (1990)–the right time to look backwards with a…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Bob Cashill has just gotten back from Taking in a screening of Ang Lee’s latest. Does he wish he could give it back? Read this week’s No Concessions to find out.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Godzilla doesn’t turn up anywhere in the three-film Icons of Sci-Fi: Toho Collection, but the movies are so terrifically entertaining he’s hardly missed. Godzilla and friends stomped across my childhood…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Back in the day, I spent part of every summer in the vicinity of the Seaside Heights amusement park on the Jersey Shore. The log flume, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Himalaya…
Bob Cashill
10 Min Read
The PG-13 rating turns 25 this year, and in his latest No Concessions, Bob Cashill has thrown it a grown-up birthday party.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The summer that brought us Woodstock and the moon landing also lives in infamy for the Manson murders, which means a rehash of the life, times, and crimes of Sharon…
Bob Cashill
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Got your ticket stub, your popcorn, and your extra large soda? Meet Bob Cashill in the No Concessions lobby, where he’s waiting to tell you about the summer’s finest in indie fare.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
I don’t smoke. I don’t like smoking. But I don’t like moves to ban smoking in movies, either. Smoking is a sad fact of life, as our president will attest,…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
If you’re looking to commemorate the moonwalk–the original moonwalk, that is–on July 20, look not to the stars but to your DVD vendor, and pick up a copy of Al…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
For this week’s Popdose Flashback, Bob Cashill reminisces about the B-52s’ Cosmic Thing — and a certain very, very friendly young lady in Thailand.
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
The Hurt Locker does the impossible: It single-handedly redeems the mostly misbegotten run of “sand” films, those war-on-terror features connected to Iraq and Afghanistan, a genre about as useless and…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Most DVD commentaries end with the participants saying goodbye, or “see you next time,” or simply disappearing as the credits roll. “This is a good movie, you can’t take that…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Amidst the turbulence in the world of pop culture comes good news from, of all places, Afghanistan. At the start of the new documentary Afghan Star, we see a line…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
My list of favorite comics-inspired movies would include the first two Superman films, the first two X-Men, Batman Returns, Spider-Man 2, Ghost World, the 1980 Flash Gordon, and Last Year…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
New Yorkers aren’t a sentimental bunch. But there are some things we’re fiercely protective of. One of those is the 1974 crime drama The Taking of Pelham One Two Three….
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
“The Man Behind the Magic,” the title of the mainstage extra within this five-film set of movies the genial two-time Oscar winner made for Columbia Pictures from 1954-1964, tells you…
Bob Cashill
1 Min Read
Bob Cashill is back for another week of film reviews — and for this edition of No Concessions, he digs into The Hangover, Killshot, and the Youssou N’Dour documentary I Bring What I Love.