Sam Adams's posts

In Taken 2, Famke Janssen spends much of her screen time in a stupor, lying semi-conscious while Liam Neeson fights…

Few talk about the ’90s as a filmmaking renaissance on par with the late ’60s and early ’70s, but for many of the…

A toothless, insufferably smug satire using competitive butter-carving as a weak-tea stand-in for Midwestern…

1. Seinfeld on Curb Your Enthusiasm (2009)
Used to be, TV cast reunions were the province of prime-time specials like …

Viewers who miss the credits of Hotel Transylvania, an animated romp with Adam Sandler as a single-dad Dracula…

Rowing, as viewers are reminded several times in Sarah Megan Thomas’ belated-coming-of-age tale, is the only sport…

Nick Cave’s recent albums with Grinderman come straight from the id, but in the last several years, he has given…

Early in Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s documentary Detropia, a woman who spends her free time exploring Detroit’s…

The protagonist of Ira Sachs’ Keep The Lights On, a slouching, congenitally morose filmmaker played by Danish actor…

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They…

The word “controversial” gets thrown around with little justification, but for Craig Zobel’s Compliance, it’s a snug…

For someone whose work is largely based on his own missteps, Mike Birbiglia has managed the transition between media…

Dax Shepard’s résumé is a catalog of dopes and dirtbags, but there’s more to him than meets the eye. He first came…

1. Jaws (1975) 
Conventional wisdom dictates that the Hollywood renaissance of the late ’60s and ’70s, when auteurs…

Although she already had almost a dozen films under her belt, Gina Gershon found her defining role in the 1996 film…

Art Garfunkel may have been the airy counterpoint to Paul Simon's coffee-house philosophizing, but anyone who's seen…

Directors lucky enough to live into their mid-70s can be excused for taking it easy, resting on their laurels or…

The most stylistically elusive and qualitatively inconsistent of China’s Fifth Generation directors, Chen Kaige has…

Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They…

1-2. Sylvester Stallone, F.I.S.T. (1978); First Blood (1982)
Sylvester Stallone is the actor’s equivalent of a…