Email Author Eric Hynes

2011 Stories by Eric Hynes

• The Year in Film: The Old Men and 3-D

  published December 21, 2011

  It was 1952 in Haddon Township, New Jersey, and five-year-old Steven Spielberg was bummed about The Greatest Show on Earth, the first... More >>

• You Know You Are Watching a Garry Marshall Movie When...

  published December 7, 2011

  Garry Marshall gives you what you came for. "A dollar's work for a dollar's pay" is how Marshall mainstay Hector Elizondo puts it in The... More >>

• Coriolanus

  published November 30, 2011

  Updating Shakespeare seems doubly condescending, the implication being that we need help in relating to the text, and that the text needs to be... More >>

• A Warrior's Heart

  published November 30, 2011

  The latest film to ride Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth as if it were a nonconsensual pony, A Warrior's Heart tries to... More >>

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  NYFF: And the Ladies Have It

  published September 28, 2011

  While gentlemen thespians such as Fassbender, Clooney, and Banderas hog all the headlines, the real story at this year’s New York Film... More >>

• You Are Old: Pearl Jam Twenty

  published September 21, 2011

  Success came swiftly and voluminously—millions of records sold, Grammys, VMAs, the cover of Time magazine—when Pearl Jam dropped... More >>

• Modern Love, the Real Thing, Over 48 Hours in Weekend

  published September 21, 2011

  Naturalistic without being ineloquent, heartfelt yet unsentimental, Weekend is the rarest of birds: a movie romance that rings true.... More >>

• 69 with a Dirty-Mind: Age Has Not Mellowed The Weird World of Blowfly

  published September 14, 2011

  Now this is a résumé: dapper king of Miami soul, groove-master songwriter for the likes of Sam & Dave, trailblazer of rap music,... More >>

• All-American: Dearborn's Young Arabs Take to the Field in Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football

  published September 7, 2011

  Anyone who still thinks America and Islam are mutually exclusive concepts should consider the phenomenon of Dearborn, Michigan. Containing the... More >>

• Don't Judge a Movie By Its WWE Affiliation: The Pulpy Surprise of Inside Out

  published September 7, 2011

  A vehicle for a professional wrestler in which choke holds aren't administered until the 65th minute, this WWE-produced thriller is the best... More >>

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  After 9/11: Time Heals *Some* Wounds, Others Persist, in Rebirth

  published August 31, 2011

  An intimate group portrait on an epic scale, Rebirth tracks the long tails of grief and recovery through the ongoing stories of five... More >>

• Improve Your Golf Game in One Easy Step! God on the Green in Seven Days in Utopia

  published August 31, 2011

  A fantasy about a temperamental, wand-wielding young man named Luke and the aphorism-uttering master who leads him to enlightenment, Seven... More >>

• Looking for Toynbee Tile Truth and Protecting the Mystery in Resurrect Dead

  published August 31, 2011

  "This thing that's been here all along doesn't make sense." Alien to the street yet embedded within it, easy to read but... More >>

• Who Shot Morgan? A Proper Violence Tries to Talk it Out

  published August 24, 2011

  Unless a filmmaker of Claude Chabrol's wicked-sharp intellect is in charge, psychological thrillers can usually stand to spare the psychology.... More >>

• A Sexy-Time Thriller Starring Ian Ziering, Stripped Down Takes Itself Seriously

  published August 24, 2011

  Five years after it was made, and two years after it was dumped into the DVD market, talent-starved shaggy-dog thriller Stripped Down... More >>

• Working Blue: Smurfsex from Peyo to Porn

  published July 27, 2011

  The following piece contains many, many links that are NSFW. Mere minutes into The Smurfs, evil wizard Gargamel (Hank... More >>

• The Muppets Take Queens

  published July 13, 2011

  One of my earliest multiplex memories is of seeing my mother go batshit over Kermit the Frog. This was opening weekend of The Muppet... More >>

• Azazel Jacobs Doesn't Have to Be Cool Anymore

  published June 29, 2011

  Sheepishly, obligingly, Azazel Jacobs trespasses into the apartment where he used to live. On Avenue A and 10th Street, above where the... More >>

• Doc Filmmaker Goes Inside the New York Times, Gets Story

  published June 8, 2011

  A media organization covering the media is reflexive enough, but how about adding documentary filmmakers to the mix? “It was journalists... More >>

• Richard Ayoade, IT Boy

  published June 1, 2011

  Imagine if David Fincher had played Joey on Friends. Or if Michel Gondry had replaced Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men.... More >>

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  Bros Roofie-ing Bros, Again, in The Hangover Part II

  published May 25, 2011

  Most sequels are born of good box office rather than good ideas—if you build it and they come, you simply must build another one—but... More >>

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  Battered Wife Spreads Her Wings (And Then Some) in Caterpillar

  published May 4, 2011

  Legendary Japanese softcore auteur Kôji Wakamatsu channels Samuel Fuller for a twisted domestic-drama-cum-psychosexual-evisceration of... More >>

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  Thor's a Bore

  published May 4, 2011

  After more than a decade of high-profile Hollywood reboots, the shelves at Marvel and DC are starting to look empty. First came the obvious... More >>

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  Better Movies, Less Hoopla--Tribeca Finds Its Footing

  published April 20, 2011

  At first it was about neighborhood. Then it was about stars, parties, and supersizing. But finally, for its 10th incarnation, the Tribeca Film... More >>

• Dumbstruck: Ventriloquism Doc Without Much to Say

  published April 20, 2011

  Following the apparent dictum that every sliver of American culture must be captured in a feature-length documentary film, Mark Goffman’s... More >>