Posts by Wesley Morris
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![Inside Llewyan Davis]()
The 20 Overlooked Performances That Should (But Won’t) Get Oscar Nominations
Recognizing the great work that may go unrecognized.
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![August Osage County]()
Die, Mommie, Die: The Screaming, Slapping Shamelessness of Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts in August: Osage County
What are the TV ads for this new Meryl Streep–Julia Roberts movie trying to tell us? For the record, it’s called August: Osage County, but no one’s going to say that, because what the hell is an “August: Osage County”? Besides, once you leave the theater you’ll just be calling it Meryl & Julia: SVU. […]
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![Saving Mr Banks]()
A Spoonful of Cyanide: The Chilly, Borderline Nastiness of Saving Mr. Banks
In Saving Mr. Banks, Emma Thompson plays Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers. It’s the early 1960s, and Travers keeps her hair in a short, close perm. She wears body-hugging tweed suits and her face is frozen in a clench of exasperation. Everything about her is tight, which is meant to make her eventual emotional undoing […]
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![Wolf of Wall Street]()
A-oooh!
Martin Scorsese’s (amazing) The Wolf of Wall Street and the best Leonardo DiCaprio has ever been.
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![Keanu Reeves in 47 Ronin]()
Fight Schlub: The Flabby 47 Ronin
Everything that works for Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone in Grudge Match works against Keanu Reeves in 47 Ronin. He’s passive and deferential. This is a mystical samurai fantasy, based on a defining Japanese honor-and-revenge legend. The cast is mostly Japanese, and the deference, on Reeves’s part, feels like an act of resistance. He […]
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Wesley Morris and Alex Pappademas
A nonbinding conversation about 2013 top-10 lists that doesn’t include any actual lists, plus Alex and Wesley discuss ‘Her’ and the career of Spike Jonze.
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Do You Like Prince Movies? Podcast: Her and Spike Jonze
A nonbinding conversation about 2013 top 10 lists that doesn’t include any actual lists, plus Alex and Wesley discuss Her and the career of Spike Jonze. Listen to the podcast here: ESPN.com Podcenter Subscribe to the Grantland Network on iTunes, and check out our podcasts page.
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![Grudge Match]()
Grudge Match: When Did De Niro Get Interested in Actually Acting Again?
You see the posters for Grudge Match and know exactly how the pitch meeting went: “It’s Rocky versus Raging Bull!” But that gets you no further than a Super Bowl ad. And maybe Grudge Match should’ve lasted 60 seconds, but it’s a nearly two-hour movie that shakes loose of that pitch and puts some effort […]
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![Her]()
Boy Uploads Girl: The Beautiful, Sad, Near-Future Shock of Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’
Spike Jonze doesn’t simply direct. He innovates. His fourth movie, Her, is set in a kind of deluxe present. The apartments are spacious luxury boxes that reach way into the sky. Some of the clothes are combination garments, like a blazer with shirt buttons and high-waisted, slimming trousers. The main character, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), […]
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![Wesley destruction]()
The Year of the Movie Apocalypse
Is the end nigh for Hollywood?
