Email Author Michelle Orange

2010 Stories by Michelle Orange

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  The Tourist: The Lives of Angie and Johnny

  published December 8, 2010

  Men follow Angelina Jolie in The Tourist. Men and cameras. They follow her—chic, coiffed, assless—through the streets of... More >>

• Discover Mars, an Interplanetary Indie

  published December 1, 2010

  New frontiers are at a premium, whether you’re in the space-travel or movie-making biz. Seemingly inspired by that challenge, first-time... More >>

• Willets Point: Queens Has Issues

  published November 24, 2010

  A jarring fusion of blue-collar lament and the-more-you-know medical drama, Willets Point initially focuses on the pressure that married... More >>

• Aasif Mandvi Forced to Cook Indian Food in Today's Special

  published November 17, 2010

  Cheerful in outline and yet prone to maudlin bulges in its middle, Today's Special stars Daily Show correspondent Aasif Mandvi as... More >>

• Something Amiss at the Roadside Motel in Beneath the Dark

  published November 3, 2010

  Beneath the Dark deserves better than its straight-to-basic-cable title, but not a whole lot better. The directing debut of All the... More >>

• Orphans, Nuns, WWE, and MMA? What Could Possibly Go Wrong in Knucklehead?

  published October 20, 2010

  A schmaltzy family comedy that won’t pass the smell test for kids, parents, or even stoner second cousins, Knucklehead is too... More >>

• Democracy At Its Not-So-Finest in Gerrymandering

  published October 13, 2010

  Jeff Reichert’s Gerrymandering complements Inside Job, the recent indictment of the U.S. financial system, in two key ways:... More >>

• Jay Rosenblatt Keeps on Digging in The Darkness of Day

  published October 13, 2010

  Jay Rosenblatt is a digger, an archive-driven artist who burrows his themes into a collaged continuum of found images. The results are oddly... More >>

• An Expert on Nazi Doctors, Robert J. Lifton Makes His Case

  published October 6, 2010

  An extended, well-paced, mostly one-sided private audience with the first half of its title, Robert Jay Lifton: Nazi Doctors puzzles out... More >>

• Is It Just Me? Or Is This Movie Just a Gay Truth About Cats and Dogs?

  published September 29, 2010

  A cheap, cheerful, and extremely gay take on the sunny L.A. romantic comedy, Is It Just Me? is essentially a homosexually cast retread... More >>

• A Prison Guard, a Priest, and the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name in Release

  published September 29, 2010

  The provocative, say-what-now setup of Release’s opening sequence pretty much guarantees that things will not turn out well for its... More >>

• The Idealist and the Hot Dog Cart in The Happy Poet

  published September 15, 2010

  Fresh from a showing in Venice, the Austin-bred SXSW pet The Happy Poet is returning to its native shores a little worldlier for the... More >>

• D.C.'s AIDS Epidemic, Otherwise Ignored, in The Other City

  published September 15, 2010

  At a point so subtle it was easy to miss, somewhere in the late-'90s, HIV and AIDS began to be thought of as third-world problems. It's... More >>

• Relationships With Pets Explored in Etienne!

  published September 1, 2010

  At the heart of Etienne!, writer/director Jeff Mizushima's urban picaresque about a San Francisco loner and his beloved, dying pet, is a... More >>

• Coming of Age On and Off the Baseball Field in Calvin Marshall

  published August 18, 2010

  Calvin Marshall (Alex Frost) knows baseball like no one else on his junior college's team. He's got discipline, technique, and a love of the... More >>

• Freedom Fighters for France in WWII Epic Army of Crime

  published August 18, 2010

  "We kill people, but we're on the side of life," Joseph Epstein (Lucas Belvaux) tells Missak Manouchian (Simon Abkarian) in Army of... More >>

• Piano Lesson for the Middle-Aged Amateurs Among Us in They Came to Play

  published August 11, 2010

  A welcome twist on the now-ubiquitous kiddie competition doc, They Came to Play centers on the Van Cliburn Foundation's gathering of the... More >>

• Behind the Improv in Trust Us, This Is All Made Up

  published August 11, 2010

  A cannily filmed performance by noted improv team TJ Jagodowski and David Pasquesi bookended by reflections on the nature of their work,... More >>

• Dance Moves IN YOUR FACE in Step Up 3D

  published August 4, 2010

  The dance battles that structure the Step Up films are all about the Move—the one unexpected, mind-blowing, totally impossible... More >>

• Cats & Dogs (and Pigeons and Christina Applegate)

  published July 27, 2010

  About as unremarkable as a film about talking animals organized into competing intelligence agencies can be, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of... More >>

• Only When I Dance Documents Struggling Would-Be Brazilians Stars

  published June 29, 2010

  "All Brazilians know how to dance," says the mother of one of the two ballet students at the heart of Only When I Dance. "It's in our... More >>

• Many, Many Children Left Behind in Ed Doc, The Lottery

  published June 8, 2010

  The ginger stepchild of President Obama's election platform, it seems that this country's broke-ass education system is finally stepping up for... More >>

• A Quick Look at BAMcinemaFEST Docs: His & Hers

  published June 8, 2010

  An ordered collage of brief, unidentified vignettes that draw a straight line through the life of the average Irish woman, His & Hers... More >>

• Doctors Without Borders, Living in Emergency

  published June 1, 2010

  Not interested in heroicizing the four Western doctors it follows through their missions in the Congo and Liberia, or even in white-washing the... More >>

• Another Wannabe Woody Allen Makes Finding Bliss Even More Impossible

  published June 1, 2010

  Somebody, somewhere along the line, did writer/director Julie Davis (Amy's Orgasm) the disservice of describing her as a female Woody... More >>