Posts by Tom Carson
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‘Spies’ Like Us: Steven Spielberg and the Cold War’s Forgotten Battles
The most famous director in Hollywood tackles a lost piece of 20th-century history — and triumphs.
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Career Arc: Richard Gere
Future sociologists may well learn more about how America works from studying Gere’s movies than they will from Robert De Niro’s filmography.
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‘Clear’ As Mud: HBO’s Riveting Scientology Documentary
Will the Sundance sensation ‘Going Clear’ change the way Americans view Scientology?
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Clint’s Cause: The Case for ‘American Sniper’
One version of America is stubbornly rising, another got lost in the wastes of Iraq, and that’s why Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma’ and Eastwood’s film bookend each other better than you’d think.
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Career Arc: Bob Odenkirk’s Long, Strange Ride to the Top
If anyone’s career makes a case for the upside of inconsequentiality, his does.
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The Years of Magical Thinking: Ricky Jay’s Remarkable Career and Legacy
‘American Masters’ finally celebrates the greatest illusionist of our age.
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‘Je Suis Charlie’ and Where We Go From Here
We all know how it goes with modern atrocities. Every blood puddle gets turned into a Rorschach blot. The way it’s interpreted is guaranteed to expose unconscious (or even conscious) special pleading at best, and an agenda in search of opportunities at worst. Last week, all that happened like clockwork.
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Black Christmas: Scandal, Schadenfreude, and the Spectacle of the Sony Hack
The story of the attack on ‘The Interview’ has taken a very dark turn.
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A Golden State: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Secret, Sprawling, Multi-Film History of California
The hidden story that knits a director’s work together.
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The Movies of 1994: The Near-Perfect ‘Dumb and Dumber’
The beauty — and even, to some extent, the daring — of ‘Dumb and Dumber’ is that Harry is only slightly less IQ-challenged than Lloyd, and spends a lot less time getting exasperated with him than sharing his wavelength and endorsing his dreams.
