Steve McQueen

The Place Beyond the Pines

The year's first stab at a masterpiece.

Christmas Past: The Lost Sinatra Group Christmas Episode

While we celebrate the holidays, Rocks Off is resurrecting a few of our best Christmas-themed blogs from the past few years. (Wait... resurrecting is Easter. Never mind.) This blog originally appeared December 22, 2010. Through the magic of Christmas, Rocks Off has received a copy of the transcript ... More >>

Hit & Run

A '70s car-chase flick for the Utne Reader set.

Bun B: On the Road with the Trill OG During Gumball 3000

Bun B is a busy man. A quick search of this publication finds him supporting the local music scene, doing his duties as an associate professor at Rice University, rallying over social issues and even receiving an official proclamation from the mayor of Houston. He is active in the local food-truck s ... More >>

Capsule Art Reviews: "Neurotic," "The Cowboy Spirit: Faces of the American West," "The Livable Forest," "Pictures and Words," "Push Play," "Thin Places"

Capsule Art Reviews: "Gunplay," "Neurotic," "The Livable Forest," "Perspectives 177: McArthur Binion"

Capsule Art Reviews: "Berlin, Potsdamer Platz," "The Graphic Arts of Hans Erni," "The Livable Forest," "Love Man," "New Paintings: Geoff Hippenstiel," "Perspectives 177: McArthur Binion"

Health Department Roundup

"The language used in some of these violations is troublingly oblique, Christopher."​Back to the old style this week, where inspectors check out dozens and dozens of places, but hand out next to nothing in the way of citations or closures. The only place to get cited was also temporarily clo ... More >>

The Film Issue: People of the Year

The Film Issue

The Film Issue

Looking back on the year in movies, and what's coming in 2012.

Body Horror

Extreme sex addiction in Shame.

Pop Rocks: How Do You React To The Proposed Grown Ups Sequel? With Animated Gifs.

​It's a busy time of year for movie critic types. Many of us are butting up against deadlines for award nominations, watching lots of year-end screeners of some pretty memorable films by the likes of Terence Malick, Steve McQueen, and Lynne Ramsay, among others. But everyone needs a palate cl ... More >>

Reviews for the Easily Distracted:
Shame

Title: Shame What Is He Ashamed Of? Not walking around naked, I tell you what. Rating Using Random Objects Relevant To The Film: Four JFKs out of five. Brief Plot Synopsis: NYC sex addict's life of meaningless fornicating is interrupted by the arrival of his possibly unhinged sister. Tagline: ... More >>

Prisoners of Sex: 10 Movie Womanizers, from the Sick to the Sublime

The movies are full of bed-hopping men -- think of Humphrey Bogart's serial flirtations in The Big Sleep (1946), and Richard Roundtree laying his way uptown and down in Shaft (1971). But in Steve McQueen's Shame, slated to open in Houston December 16, womanizing is not just an outgrowth of the plot ... More >>

High-rise Robbery

Stealing from the rich to...oh, whatever. Funny is the message in Tower Heist.

Texas's Nazi POW Camps: Five facts of an odd time

Nazi POWs in Texas: Five Facts, Including the Most Inept Escapes Ever

Texas used to be dotted with prisoner-of-war camps in World War II, a temporary home to thousands of Germans and Italians. Texas had far more prisoners than any other state, mainly because the first batch came from the North Africa campaign, and the Geneva Convention said prisoners should be housed ... More >>

Wildfire Relief: The 8 Best Firefighter Movies

​This wildfire stuff is getting ridiculous. The entire state of Texas is experiencing drought, categorized as "extreme" or "exceptional" in 95 percent of the state. Severe lack of rain high winds and high pressure = the fires currently ravaging Bastrop and Montgomery counties. Firefighters ... More >>

Pop Rocks: "Getting Too Old For This Shit" - A Cinematic History

The first?​Time marches on. There comes a point in all of our lives when the inevitability of our eventual demise goes from esoteric concept to concrete fact. There's no set schedule for when awareness will strike; maybe it's the first time your back gives out, or when you find yourself squint ... More >>

Grand Prix Houston Making a Comeback?

Get this poster back up on Ed Emmett's bedroom wall!​A local organizing committee (LOC) for the Grand Prix of Houston announced Thursday its intentions of reviving the event at a press conference from the Houston Auto Show at Reliant Park. The committee, spearheaded by local businessman George ... More >>

The Lost Sinatra Group Christmas Episode

​Through the magic of Christmas, Rocks Off has received a copy of the transcript of the "Sinatra Group" sketch that was filmed in an alternate reality last weekend, one in which Phil Hartman never died, and Saturday Night Live is currently in one of its funniest seasons to date. What else cou ... More >>

Third Strike

Grand Prize finallys opens

Year in Film: Three Critics, One List, Ten Best

J. Hoberman, Robert Wilonsky and Scott Foundas put their minds together and come up with their favorite films of the year. Let's hear it for teamwork!

Aftermath: Drive-By Truckers' Cathartic, Down-Home Halloween Redemption at House of Blues

Photos by Jay Lee​ It took Aftermath most of Friday to figure out why we were in such an awful blue funk after Thursday's Pogues show, especially after the band delivered a more brilliant set than even this 20-year fan thought they were capable of. But after leaving work early and relaxing for a w ... More >>

Drive-By Truckers, A to Z

Alabama Ass Whuppin'

The Spread: Solid Platinum on West T. C. Jester

Shots in the Dark

Reflecting its moment, Cannes 2008 takes a decidedly serious tone

Cannes Class of 2008

A jury divided unites around Laurent Cantet's schoolhouse drama

Shots in the Dark

Reflecting its moment, Cannes 2008 takes a decidedly serious tone

Marty Stuart's American Odyssey Does Houston

John Royal’s Top Ten All-Time Greatest Sports Movies

Get Lit: Noogie’s Time To Shine, by Jim Knipfel

Beauty at Buchenwald

Lt. Nanny

Vin Diesel moves in, and the laughs move out

Like Moths to a Flame

Americans likely will swarm to Ladder 49, an unabashed homage to firefighters

Reconsider Him

At the end, Warren Zevon's past is finally unearthed

See, Hear

Without Elmer Bernstein, scores of movies wouldn't have sounded the same

Say Cheese

Movie producer Robert Evans preserves his golden myth in The Kid Stays in the Picture

Los Gringos Locos

Julia Roberts's and Brad Pitt's performances go straight south in The Mexican

Drag King

Actor-comic Eddie Izzard just wants to be loved

Mexican Combo Plate

Billy Bob's adaptation of Pretty Horses mixes together too many ingredients, all of them undercooked

Turn of the Screwball

The Tao of Steve follows the emotional transformation of a geeky lothario

The Steve McQueen Affair

The "Steve McQueen: The King of Cool" film retrospective

Undeserving Heir

This Thomas Crown can't match the sizzle of the original

Sound Check

Getting Hooked, Brilliantly

With The Basketball Diaries, Leonardo DiCaprio becomes a star

B.S. 101

John Singleton's Higher Learning fails to make the grade

On the Fast Track

Speed proves there's still life in the old car chase

Getaway from Me

Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger sprout personalities to save an otherwise lackluster thriller