Articles by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

James Stewart: The Signature Collection

PUBLISHED Feb 19, 2007

If you need me to describe the gentle everyman persona of James Stewart, you probably unplug your television every year at Christmas. And i...

Takeshis'

Takeshi Kitano

PUBLISHED Feb 19, 2007

This is an awesomely self-reflexive meditation on fame and its costs by Japan’s media titan, Takeshi Kitano. He plays the two roles of Beat...

Time to Leave

Francois Ozon

PUBLISHED Feb 19, 2007

Why is Francois Ozon the best distributed of all French directors? Hardly a year goes by before the auteur, who’s a talented drawing room d...

Grand Theft Auto

Ron Howard

PUBLISHED Feb 16, 2007

As a devoted hater of the oeuvre of Ron Howard, it is my solemn duty to proclaim Grand Theft Auto his most entertaining movie. This is not...

The Great Happiness Space

Jake Clennell

PUBLISHED Feb 16, 2007

Human relations are experienced at their most exploitive in this heartbreaking documentary about the lower depths of Osaka. The subject is...

Gridiron Gang

Phil Joanou

PUBLISHED Feb 16, 2007

Inspirational sports movies are the absolute worst. Usually based on "true events,” they all wind up telling the same fiction: a bunch of m...

The Guardian

Andrew Davis

PUBLISHED Feb 16, 2007

There’s no pressing reason to see this big pot of inspirational swill, but those who find themselves watching it might find themselves bemu...

The House of Sand

Andrucha Waddington

PUBLISHED Feb 16, 2007

Stephen King once described Kubrick’s The Shining as "a big, beautiful automobile with no engine in it.” That’s the way I feel about this B...