Email Author Chris Packham

2013 Stories by Chris Packham

• 

  Babygirl Paints New York City and its People as Fragile yet Strong

  published October 2, 2013

  New York films often reflect back Manhattan's cool visual tones, blues and slates as cold and forbidding as a glass-box skyscraper. It's kind... More >>

• 

  Running Wild: The Life of Dayton O. Hyde Tells the Inspiring Story of a Naturalist Cowboy

  published October 2, 2013

  Writer, naturalist, and lifelong cowboy Dayton O. Hyde describes the changes he discovered in the American West after his return from the... More >>

• 

  Bad Milo! Will Meet Your Expectations of a Movie About Ass Demons

  published October 2, 2013

  We like it when things exceed expectations, because it justifies our collective sense of childlike optimism. Life is awesome! Take... More >>

• 

  The Secret Lives of Dorks is the Jim Belushi of High-School Romantic Comedies

  published September 25, 2013

  Freaks and Geeks was the first TV show to acknowledge what everyone with a high school diploma already knew: that there are deep... More >>

• 

  Hawking Exhibits a Painstakingly Three-Dimensional View of the Genius Physicist's Life

  published September 11, 2013

  If he had wanted it, physicist Stephen Hawking could have been an enigma. His degenerative motor neuron disease was supposed to have ended his... More >>

• Barring a Few Unsavory Detours, Sample This Thrives in its Music and Legacy

  published September 11, 2013

  "Destiny played a major hand," intones creepy leather-goblin Gene Simmons, dramatically overstating what went down at early recording sessions... More >>

• 

  Mission Park Has the Originality of a Basic-Cable Cop Drama

  published September 4, 2013

  Poor old Michael Jackson never experienced anything like a real life unmediated by money, power, or the acquired narcissism of the... More >>

• Blood Loses Itself in Gulfs of Melodramatic Angst

  published August 7, 2013

  Blood wants to be a Greek tragedy about family loyalties, guilt, and the fall of a dynasty, but the characters never manage to connect... More >>

• 

  Men in Bland: R.I.P.D. is a Movie That Exists

  published July 17, 2013

  In actual life, bureaucratic systems are the only workable state-citizen interface we’ve developed that can handle the sheer bulk of... More >>

• Terms and Conditions May Apply Chronicles the Death of Privacy

  published July 10, 2013

  "There's some definite movement in the yard!" If you imagine that line spoken by the pimply, squeaky-voiced teen who works every drive-through... More >>

• Stuck in Love is Full of Smart Characters Actually Doing Something

  published July 3, 2013

  It's hard to tell actual stories about people whose lives are in holding patterns, because the synopsis is all, "Ned lied on the sofa and... More >>

• Elijah Wood Kills Party Girls as a Maniac

  published June 19, 2013

  Slasher films are essentially Blade Runner Voight-Kampff tests, only instead of deploying imagery of overturned turtles and calfskin... More >>

• Joss Whedon Strips Much Ado About Nothing to His Signature Elements

  published June 5, 2013

  In Joss Whedon's The Avengers, Iron Man gets off a good burn on Thor during their intramural fight in the woods: "Shakespeare in the... More >>

• Entitled Fraternity Dicks Return to The Hangover Part III

  published May 22, 2013

  The unlikeliest of all the Hangover trilogy's comic implausibilities might be its four pampered rich-boy leads unironically calling... More >>

• How Sweet It Is Requires Your Unhinged Commitment

  published May 8, 2013

  Last week, scientists released the results of a study that suggests inhibiting a compound called "nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer"... More >>

• Farmers Must Expand or Die, Or Both, in At Any Price

  published April 24, 2013

  Farm films blow up human drama to mythic, big-sky terms in which the world itself is represented by a character's land, hard-earned and easily... More >>

• The Girl Finds Easy Renewed Faith and Whatnot

  published March 6, 2013

  The initial grimness of David Riker’s The Girl promises a plunge into narrative depression that, thankfully, dissipates with the... More >>

• Ed Harris Stars in Phantom, "Inspired" by "Actual" "Events"

  published February 27, 2013

  Submarine movies are made out of claustrophobia, silent crewmen listening for enemy pings, and usually a bad guy whose personality is way too... More >>

• A Place at the Table Probes Rampant Hunger in Our Land of Plenty

  published February 27, 2013

  Globally, the word "hunger" has come to signify the most severe forms of malnutrition, starvation seldom seen in first-world industrial... More >>

• Almost in Love: Jesus, These People Are Boring

  published February 13, 2013

  Shot digitally in two extended 40-minute takes, director Sam Neave's Almost in Love has audacity and theatrical immediacy working for... More >>

• Lyric Reality Illuminates The Playroom

  published February 6, 2013

  When authors endow child characters with adult intelligence, the kids often become disappointing puppets. But allowing a brilliant fictional... More >>

• Warm Bodies: Bloodless Romance and Bloodless Carnage

  published January 30, 2013

  Nerd stats for the two kinds of zombies featured in Jonathan Levine's Warm Bodies: "Bonies" are leathery, desiccated skeletons with +10... More >>

• The Taste of Money: Spoiler Alert! Cash Corrupts

  published January 23, 2013

  In the kind of shocking development that used to send Charlton Heston shrieking into the streets, it turns out that—despite all the... More >>

• A Dark Truth

  published January 2, 2013

  Groping for the levers of outrage is an OK way to establish a narrative rapport with an audience, and giant and amoral corporations can provide... More >>