Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a middle-aged magazine writer who hates his job. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), is a real-estate broker. Their sixteen-year-old daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), has low self-esteem and despises her parents. The Burnhams’ new neighbors are retired United States Marine Corps Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), his wife, Barbara (Allison Janney), […]
Archives for June 2007
The Shining
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is less an adaptation of Stephen King’s bestselling horror novel than a complete reimagining of it from the inside out. In King’s book, the Overlook Hotel is a haunted place that takes possession of its off-season caretaker and provokes him to murderous rage against his wife and young son. Kubrick’s movie […]
Mr. Brooks
Kevin Costner appears in this psychological thriller as Earl Brooks, a warped serial killer and pillar of the community whose dark side is embodied by an on-screen William Hurt Mr. Brooks is an unsavory story, and it turns out to be a lot less kicky than it sounds. Mr. Brooks is a Portland, Oregon tycoon […]
Laverne & Shirley: The Series
As a spin-off from the television series Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley was an instant hit and one of the most popular sitcoms of the ’70s. While a bit quaint by contemporary standards, its light-hearted sentiment is strictly old-school, due to the crowd-pleasing influence of producer and cocreator Garry Marshall. As working-class roommates in mid-1950s […]