Email Author Chris Packham

2012 Stories by Chris Packham

• Parental Guidance

  published December 26, 2012

  In much the same way that pig-romancing hill folk felt slandered by William Denison "Bill" McKinney's performance in Deliverance, the... More >>

• The Girl

  published December 19, 2012

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

• Seth Rogen Takes His Centrum Silver in The Guilt Trip

  published December 19, 2012

  Once comic actors reach a particular career stage, they often choose one of two paths: A) They stop being funny and start being all Hallmark... More >>

• Let Fury Have the Hour

  published December 12, 2012

  Although it sets out to document a hopeful narrative of social change, Let Fury Have the Hour also demonstrates the clarifying and... More >>

• The Fitzgerald Family Christmas

  published December 5, 2012

  If you knew you were dying, and it was Halloween, your first impulse might not be to gather your whole estranged family together for one last... More >>

• To See the Fights, Universal Soldier 4 Demands You Suffer

  published November 28, 2012

  Depending on whether you count direct-to-video releases, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is either the fourth or sixth film in the... More >>

• Adventures with Santa and Co. in Rise of the Guardians

  published November 21, 2012

  Unlike such vengeful, justice-dispensing figures as Jehovah and RoboCop, the traditional pantheon of made-up childhood gods are all carrot and... More >>

• Seeds of Resiliency

  published November 21, 2012

  The seeds of resiliency, as defined by the strangely titled documentary Seeds of Resiliency, are composed of horrible circumstances best... More >>

• Price Check

  published November 14, 2012

  At what point do the responsibilities of marriage and family supersede those of personal actualization and dream fulfillment? A lot of people... More >>

• Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg Ably Fill Lincoln's Hat

  published November 7, 2012

  There's an unfun tendency in American life to fictionalize our national heroes as rigid statue-people who only speak as though they are... More >>

• Nature Calls

  published November 7, 2012

  There are few things in America other than model railroading and the good people of the Sertoma club more earnest than scouting. So a comedy... More >>

• Sean Penn, Gothed Up and Great, in This Must Be the Place

  published October 31, 2012

  If you Google the phrase "Danzig shopping for cat supplies," you'll find links to phone-cam shots of former Misfits singer Glenn Danzig... More >>

• North Sea Texas

  published October 31, 2012

  Recently, popular films about gay characters have started moving beyond the overarching plot about society's acceptance of sexual identity and... More >>

• The Rise of Found-Footage Horror

  published October 17, 2012

  This week's Paranormal Activity 4 continues the story of an extended American family whose members own a lot of surveillance cameras,... More >>

• My Worst Nightmare

  published October 17, 2012

  The early, awesome stage of romantic relationships, characterized by firehose neurochemistry, socially off-putting behavior and a lot of... More >>

• Madrid, 1987

  published October 10, 2012

  "Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare," wrote William Shakespeare, a point drawn forcefully home if you're locked inside a small... More >>

• The Big Picture

  published October 10, 2012

  "You're as free as the wind," says Paul Exben (Romain Duris) to the son of a legal client to whom he has offered the choice of drug rehab or... More >>

• Special Forces

  published October 10, 2012

  The Hans Gruber axiom states that an action film is only as good as its bad guy: dumb antagonist, dumb film. In Israeli actor Raz Degan,... More >>

• Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

  published October 3, 2012

  Collapsing the expansiveness of book characters into quickly understood film characters involves trade-offs and compromises, kind of like chopping... More >>

• Frankenweenie Awakens the Pleasures of Reanimation

  published October 3, 2012

  Ever since Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton has mostly been in the adaptation business, rendering dark and becurlicued Sleepy Hollows,... More >>

• The Oranges

  published October 3, 2012

  Yeah, all right already, we get it about suburbia: It's a topography of middle-age despair hidden under a sunny beige façade. Also,... More >>

• Bel Borba Aqui

  published October 3, 2012

  The demolished buildings of Salvador, Brazil, are substrates for public art to one native son. Bel Borba, a mixed-media artist with a huge... More >>

• Vulgaria

  published September 26, 2012

  According to the industry’s self-reflexive examinations, film is either the golden height of human imaginative endeavor or as profane and... More >>

• Tales of the Night (Les Contes de la Nuit)

  published September 26, 2012

  Sometimes, when you appropriate the storytelling modes of other cultures or time periods, the result is an enormous, semi-informed... More >>

• Bear City 2: The Proposal

  published September 26, 2012

  Just because a completely conventional wedding comedy that happens to be about a group of gay men somehow finds a way to include a totally... More >>