By Foster Kamer 6/27/12 4:00pm

In Memoriam

Nora Ephron You've Got Mail

Nora Ephron and The New York Observer: A Footnote

Screenwriter, director, and essayist Nora Ephron died last night; she was 71. Wonderful tributes and memories of Ephron’s legacy keep pouring out (just one example: it turns out the You’ve Got Mail website is very much intact, and itself a wonderful, odd little remnant of one of her more profound tributes to the Upper West Side).

If you haven’t read the New York Times‘ exceptional obituary of Ms. Ephron do so. Meanwhile, we have been relishing our own small piece of Ephron’s legacy: The You’ve Got Mail character Frank Navasky, played by Greg Kinnear. Read More

By Drew Grant 2/07/12 6:13pm

Celebrities

Greg Kinnear, Lea Thompson, Billy Crudup at 'Thin Ice' party (Patrick McMullan)

Billy Crudup Has a Lot to Say About the Weather in Minneapolis

“Have you ever been to Minneapolis?” Billy Crudup asked the New York Observer last night at the Soho Grand Hotel’s Club Room, where the Cinema Society & Grey Goose were hosting an after-party for their screening of the bleakly dark comedy, Thin Ice.

We actually hadn’t been, but Mr. Crudup had, as that was where the movie had been shot.

“It’s very, very cold,” he told us.

“Oh, we can’t imagine. So in the movie…”

“No, no no noooo,” he interrupted us, chuckling. “It’s very, very cold.”

Billy Crudup then stared at the New York Observer for a beat, decided something, and leaned in to tell us a secret. Read More

By Rex Reed 7/12/11 8:00pm

movies

2

Evangelical Send-Up Salvation Boulevard Unwittingly Proves That There is a Hell: Sitting Through It

On the wobbly heels of the disastrous atheist film The Ledge comes another hopeless flop about the hypocrisy and homicidal passions of evil born-again Christians, called Salvation Boulevard. I’m not taking sides. I’m just telling you it’s a stupid farrago of aborted ideas, misguided actors, lame direction, submental writing and follow-the-dots plotting that never Read More

By Rex Reed 3/10/10 1:00am

It Ain’t Easy Watching Green

GREEN ZONE
Running time 115 minutes
Written by BRIAN HELGELAND
Directed by PAUL GREENGRASS
Starring MATT DAMON, GREG KINNEAR, AMY RYAN, BRENDAN GLEESON

2 Eyeballs out of 4

A Superman epic masquerading as a political exposé The Green Zone is one of those crypto-technical thrillers I usually have to consult a Read More

By Rex Reed 10/07/08 6:22pm

Wipeout

FLASH OF GENIUS
RUNNING TIME 119 minutes
WRITTEN BY Philip Railsback
DIRECTED BY Marc Abraham
STARRING Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham, Alan Alda, Dermot Mulroney

Equally sincere but without much entertainment value, Flash of Genius is another of those movies about honest, ordinary citizens fighting the powerful system of Read More

By Rex Reed 5/10/04 12:00am

Devil Spawn Is a Yawn

From pigtailed Rhoda Penmark in The Bad Seed to Damien, the brat with the squinty pinball eyes in The Omen and its many sandpaper sequels, the dreaded children of the damned always return to movie screens hoping to jazz up the box-office lull. With the slick, sometimes interesting but always predictable-and ultimately disappointing-thriller Godsend , Read More