Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2003 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• A Fan's Notes

  published December 18, 2003

  This being the end of the year, and since none of the people I wanted to write about this week felt it necessary to return any of my calls, from... More >>

• Not the Sweetest Thing

  published December 4, 2003

  Honey is one of those movies you will see (or not, whatever), swear you've seen before in several other guises and incarnations,... More >>

• Indian Giver

  published November 27, 2003

  In director Ron Howard's The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones's Samuel Jones takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the western... More >>

• The S-Word

  published November 27, 2003

  Bad Santa, in which Billy Bob Thornton plays a drunken department-store Santa who repeatedly swears at children, pisses... More >>

• Comics From the Front

  published November 27, 2003

  Maybe you know the feeling. Maybe it struck you one morning as you stared in the mirror before trundling off to the job you hate, or maybe it hit... More >>

• Dead, Not Buried

  published November 20, 2003

  The only man who knows the answers to the story below is dead -- has been for six years, though even before that, he may not have been able to... More >>

• Big Wet Kiss

  published November 6, 2003

  With its soundtrack stockpiled with songs of romance and Christmas and a screenplay by the man who wrote Bridget Jones's Diary, Four... More >>

• Free Will

  published November 6, 2003

  Even when people were watching Will Ferrell on television every Saturday night, they weren't seeing Will Ferrell. They saw no more than a... More >>

• The Boss

  published October 30, 2003

  On October 12, BBC America aired the second-season premiere of The Office, the beloved mockumentary that follows paper-selling rats 'round... More >>

• Rage Against the Past

  published October 23, 2003

  Dave, a man who's barely there, lulls his son to sleep with stories of a boy lost in the woods who escapes from wolves; it's a thrilling bedtime... More >>

• A Ball, Screwed

  published October 9, 2003

  It's beginning to look as though the films of George Clooney are less the works of fiction than the products of documentary crews following around... More >>

• Half and Half

  published October 9, 2003

  The opening credits insist Kill Bill: Volume 1 is "Quentin Tarantino's fourth film," when it's actually only number 3.5. The movie's... More >>

• Time and Again

  published October 2, 2003

  In Out of Time, we're asked to believe that 48-year-old Denzel Washington and 32-year-old Sanaa Lathan were high-school sweethearts.... More >>

• Hot for Teacher

  published October 2, 2003

  Think of director Richard Linklater's School of Rock as an informal sequel to Stephen Frears's adaptation of Nick Hornby's High... More >>

• Richard X

  published September 25, 2003

  On the back cover of the booklet that accompanies Richard X's first full-length is an antipiracy statement from EMI Music (Astralwerks' parent), a... More >>

• Lowbrow, Meet Eyebrow

  published September 25, 2003

  The script for The Rundown has lingered for more than a decade and was originally a Patrick Swayze vehicle, well before those wheels... More >>

• Christopher O'Riley

  published September 18, 2003

  Christopher O'Riley knows enough to care little: The classical pianist, joining the likes of Luka Bloom (ugh) and Brad Meldhau (hunh) as Those... More >>

• Grumpy Old Men

  published September 18, 2003

  Secondhand Lions is cornier than the cornfields spread out in front of the dilapidated rural Texas manse inhabited by Robert Duvall... More >>

• Con Heir

  published September 11, 2003

  When Nicolas Cage plays still and sullen -- a man possessed by self-loathing and melancholy in Adaptation, say, or the landlocked angel in... More >>

• Pekar Head

  published August 28, 2003

  Harvey Pekar, star of a long-running comic book series he writes and others illustrate, is reminded early in American Splendor that... More >>

• Dwight Yoakam

  published August 21, 2003

  You get the sense Dwight Yoakam's still "country" 'cause he needs the hat and looks good in leather pants that end in boot points; otherwise he... More >>

• Lit Up

  published August 21, 2003

  On Sunday, HBO will air the final episode of what has been the most consistently entertaining--and aggravating--show of the summer television... More >>

• Into the Sunset

  published August 14, 2003

  Kevin Costner appeared in his first western when he was 30 and looked to be in his early 20s. He was a slender, restless actor in Lawrence... More >>

• Uptown Down

  published August 14, 2003

  With its ominously square title suggesting a feature-length Billy Joel video, Uptown Girls arrives in theaters smelling a bit... More >>

• For Love of the Game

  published August 14, 2003

  He knows there are people, too many, who do not like him. He has to know. They've told him to his face--the studio executives who slice and... More >>