Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2004 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Splish Splash Thud

  published December 30, 2004

  The early reviews for Beyond the Sea, the Bobby Darin biopic on which Kevin Spacey did everything save for feeding the crew and... More >>

• Crash and Yearn

  published December 23, 2004

  The parade of real-life figures strolling into the googolplex has been endless this year: Look, there's Jamie Foxx as musical Mount Rushmore Ray... More >>

• Sea of Loathe

  published December 23, 2004

  Directed by . With . . More >>

• Focking Wonderful

  published December 23, 2004

  Directed by . With . More >>

• From Major to Minor

  published December 23, 2004

  To understand this most tumultuous year in film, over which loomed the ghost of a blessed messiah and the shadow of an accursed pariah, turn your... More >>

• Cuts Like a Knife

  published December 16, 2004

  The story is simple enough: Sometime during the dying days of the Tang Dynasty in China, though it could really be any time and any place, two... More >>

• All You Can Eat

  published December 16, 2004

  In Spanglish, which is less a story than a snapshot of a crumbling marriage populated by sitcom characters, Adam Sandler plays John... More >>

• No Dicking Around

  published November 25, 2004

  The most shocking thing about Kinsey, the first film from writer-director Bill Condon since 1998's Gods and Monsters, is how... More >>

• Skip It

  published November 25, 2004

  As the year stumbles toward its conclusion and critics begin penning their best-and-worst compendiums, here's a holiday contender fit for the... More >>

• Cage Death Match

  published November 18, 2004

  Directed by Jon Turteltaub. With Nicolas Cage, Sean Bean, Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha. Rated PG. More >>

• Gabba Gabba Henh

  published November 18, 2004

  The Ramones have been commodified (shilling Bud Light with "Blitzkrieg Bop"), deified, even gentrified (on the soundtrack to The Royal... More >>

• The Edge of Treason

  published November 11, 2004

  A week after having seen Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, no memory of it remains save some scribblings in my notepad, such is the... More >>

• Candy Caine

  published November 4, 2004

  Writer-director Charles Shyer's Alfie is less a remake of the 1966 film that made Michael Caine a star than it is a retooling that... More >>

• Super, Ordinary

  published November 4, 2004

  Since its initial publication in 1986, myriad filmmakers have attempted in vain to film Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's comic book Watchmen,... More >>

• Messed Around

  published October 28, 2004

  Ray, director Taylor Hackford's 15-years-in-the-making biography of Ray Charles, begins as you might hope: with 1959's "What'd I Say... More >>

• Icky, Icky, Icky

  published October 28, 2004

  Even before the movie begins, as the New Line logo is still coalescing on a dark screen, a man speaks on the soundtrack. He's talking about... More >>

• Mind Games

  published October 14, 2004

  Before he made Primer for some $7,000, Dallas software-engineer-turned-writer-director-actor-editor Shane Carruth had no idea how to... More >>

• Say Wha? Say Why?

  published October 14, 2004

  Maybe it's the mark of a great film that it can affect an audience member even when he sleeps through the entire thing. Such was the case with my... More >>

• Hell of a Catch

  published October 7, 2004

  There are at least three movies contained within the covers of H.G. Bissinger's best-selling 1990 nonfiction book Friday Night... More >>

• Floundering

  published September 30, 2004

  Shark Tale is an animated film, though after you see it you might wonder whether the term is intended as oxymoronic. Put simply, it... More >>

• Shallow Pop

  published September 23, 2004

  Mr. 3000 has low aspirations, which suits it well. It's about a 47-year-old baseball player trying to get three meager hits and the... More >>

• Vote No

  published September 16, 2004

  Silver City is being marketed as a biting, bitter send-up of George W. Bush. Hence the copious use of trailer footage in which Chris... More >>

• Clash Course

  published September 9, 2004

  On a Friday afternoon in late August they've come to this street corner to raise their signs and voices to protest the venal forces that would... More >>

• Yes, You Can

  published August 12, 2004

  A good friend likes to say that there's only one kind of great pop song -- the song that someone had to create, as if the writer and performer had... More >>

• Nasty Girl

  published August 5, 2004

  Little Black Book, with its Carly Simon soundtrack all but daring you to tune it out before it begins, is being marketed as a daffy... More >>