Email Author Stephanie Zacharek
2013 Stories by Stephanie Zacharek
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Only God Forgives: Gosling and Refn Re-Team for More Arthouse Violence
published July 17, 2013
Incest, eyeball-gouging, interior decorating: If Only God Forgives is any indication, writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn is a man of... More >>
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Escape From New York Returns to New York. Don't Try to Resist.
published July 17, 2013
People who lived in '80s New York—I wasn't one of them—often profess a grouchy fondness for it. Urban blight, crime in the streets... More >>
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Red 2 Isn't Great, but Helen Mirren? Fabulous.
published July 17, 2013
The world is full of lackluster movies. But the world is not full of Helen Mirren in a Marlene Dietrich fedora, or Helen Mirren in... More >>
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A Shivery, Understated Tension Runs Through Fruitvale Station
published July 10, 2013
In the early hours of New Year's Day 2009, on a platform of Oakland's Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit Station, a young man named Oscar Grant... More >>
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Despicable Me 2 Shows Why You Shouldn't Give Up On Kids' Animation
published July 3, 2013
Admit it: Redemption is boring. We think we want characters to "grow" and "change," but really, it's the people around us in real... More >>
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In Nothing Can Hurt Me, Big Star Shines Undiminished
published July 3, 2013
The average guy on the street may know who or what Big Star is or was. But the right guy will always know—or be heartened to... More >>
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Pacific Rim: Building a Better Blockbuster
published July 3, 2013
If the great god of movies, whatever slippery Mount Olympus of money he resides on, decrees that summer is the time for larger-than-life 3D... More >>
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Neil Jordan's Byzantium is a Vampiric Swoon
published June 26, 2013
We have the Twilight franchise to thank for the fact that almost no sane adult wants to see another vampire movie, ever. Not that all... More >>
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"The Hitchcock 9" Reveals a Young Master
published June 26, 2013
The surest way to see if a film makes strong visual sense is to watch it with the sound turned off, a test plenty of today's movies would... More >>
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The Heat Would Be More Likable If It Stopped Yelling Everything
published June 26, 2013
If you've never seen Sandra Bullock blow a peanut shell out of her nose, and you'd like to, The Heat is your movie. That's not... More >>
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The Lone Ranger Is an Extravagantly Squandered Opportunity
published June 26, 2013
The great movie westerns are about honor, dignity, the majesty of the landscape. But they're also about beautiful men, charismatic, sometimes... More >>
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In A Hijacking, the Pirate Life Is Tense
published June 19, 2013
Until 2005 or so, no one thought much about modern piracy of the high-seas variety. But then Somali pirates began attacking merchant ships... More >>
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The Bling Ring Is Gorgeous, If Sometimes Absent
published June 12, 2013
Delicacy of touch isn't a particularly valued commodity among American filmmakers. We like pioneer swagger in our directors; particularly in... More >>
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World War Z Shows Off Some Horrifically Effective Filmmaking
published June 12, 2013
Destruction is scary, but not half as scary as the act of rebuilding, the moment of looking at the random, jagged pieces you've got left and... More >>
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Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer Proves Punk Lives
published June 5, 2013
Anyone trying to run a civilized country should know that throwing musicians in jail for making music is always a bad idea. That didn't stop... More >>
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More Than Honey is a Delightful Journey into the Shrinking World of Bees
published June 5, 2013
Let's forget, for a moment, that Albert Einstein said that if bees were to disappear from the Earth, humankind would follow four years later.... More >>
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The Internship is Worse Than Fetching Coffee
published June 5, 2013
Eager young people can't find jobs; qualified older people can't find jobs. There's nothing funny about that, which is exactly why someone... More >>
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In Man of Steel, There's Greatness in the Superman Origin Story
published June 5, 2013
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel is a movie event with an actual movie inside, crying to get out. Despite its preposterous... More >>
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For Fans of its Predecessors, Proceed with Armor for Before Midnight
published May 22, 2013
Ask people about their favorite movies and the same titles come up regularly—Casablanca, Pulp Fiction, Annie Hall,... More >>
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We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Can't Get a Fix on Its Thorny Subject Matter
published May 22, 2013
There's a thing that sometimes happens to copy editors, the workhorses who do the final grammar cleanup, general fine-tuning, and, sometimes,... More >>
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Cannes: In Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Benicio Del Toro Acts Again!
published May 22, 2013
In Arnaud Desplechin's English-language Jimmy P. (Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian), Benicio Del Toro—freed at last from... More >>
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Cannes: The Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis
published May 22, 2013
I. First, Something About the Badges (Then We'll Get to the Coens) Someday I'm going to write a song and call it "Ballad of the... More >>
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Cannes: Steven Soderbergh's Behind the Candelabra is a Delightful Little Curio
published May 22, 2013
Ladies and gentlemen—anyone, really, who cares about his or her mug—step right up. According to a bit of advice proffered in one of... More >>
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Cannes: Refn's Again with Ryan Gosling, but Only God Forgives Isn't in the Same League as Drive
published May 22, 2013
Expectations here in Cannes were high—or at least semi-high—for Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives, in which... More >>
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Cannes: Marion Cotillard Shines in James Gray's The Immigrant
published May 22, 2013
You know those two little lines you get in your forehead when you frown? The ones that, if you frown too much, stick there for good? The French... More >>
