Jordan Hoffman
‘The Host’ Review
Cartesian Dualism lights up the screen in 'The Host' as Saoirse Ronan's alien-possessed soul loudly thinks, "don't you smile at him! Uch! You are not goin' there!" Then she leans to smooch #TeamIan. And who said there was nothing deep happening in mainstream cinema?
‘Snitch’ Review
'Snitch' begins when middle-class 18 year old Jason (Rafi Gavron) agrees to accept a giant box of ecstasy tablets sent to him via FedEx from a dumbass friend. Now he's facing a harsh mandatory minimum sentence unless he gives up another name to the Feds. Problem is, the one guy he knows in the drug trade is the one who snitched on him, so he's got no room to negotiate. But not so fast - his father
‘The Dirties’ Review
Nobody asked for this movie. But someone was going to make it. I'm just glad it was Matthew Johnson, a young (but not as young as he looks!) Canadian director/co-writer/co-star who has the chutzpah to take on a really difficult subject and the chops to deliver without coming off as crass or exploitative. There are plenty who will refuse to give 'The Dirties' the time of day, and that's somewhat un
‘Upstream Color’ Review
For some psychotic reason my parents showed me '2001: A Space Odyssey' when I was around ten. Ever since, I've been chasing that dragon. I've been looking for someone to use the powerful tools of cinema to show me - not tell me - something important about the Universe and have me work to (almost) understand it.
There have been times that have come close - Godfrey Reggio's 'Koyaanisqatsi' probably
‘Before Midnight’ Review
Allow me to mar the sophisticated, near-painterly screenplay of Richard Linklater's 'Before Midnight' with these purple lines from the Steve Miller Band: time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future.
Oozing sagacity, melancholia and, if you work at it, hope, the third and best (and hopefully not final...
‘Mud’ Review
'Mud' is a great story, but not a particularly great film.
Dripping in regional specificity and broad metaphor, Jeff Nichols' new film feels more like a big, fat American novel you get assigned in 10th grade than the follow-up to 'Take Shelter.' That earlier film's ominous tone and psychological portraiture is traded-in for large, gestural story beats that itch to be broken down and discussed for
‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’ Review
It is every 16 year-old's rite of passage to sneak into an R-rated slasher, get grossed out by blood, turned on by boobs and shout back at the screen. To that end, 'Texas Chainsaw 3D' is a worthy claimant to the franchise.
‘The Guilt Trip’ Review
I imagine the pitch meeting went like this: "Producer: We got Barbra Streisand, we got Seth Rogen, we get 'em in a car. Release it around Christmas. I mean, you gotta take grandma somewhere during the Holidays. Executive: Are there life-lessons involved? Producer: Does the Pope crap in the woods? Of course there are."
Lo and behold, a year later, these two guys found themselves at the pr
The Top 20 Movies of 2012
Ed. note: What are the Top 20 Movies of 2012? We asked our film critic Jordan Hoffman (who previously put together a list of the Best Movies of the first half of the year) to compile a list of the Best of 2012 of all the many movies he saw this year.
‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Review
I have no firsthand knowledge of how the CIA works. (You are shocked, I'm sure.) Yet among the things that has me so excited about Kathryn Bigelow's major new achievement, 'Zero Dark Thirty,' is that I come away from it thinking “yeah, that feels right.” So much in this story of “how we got Bin Laden” is a mixture of bullheaded perseverance and dumb luck. We've heard about “the fog of war” but thi