Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2008 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Risky Business

  published December 25, 2008

  Claus Philipp Maria Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg — a lot of name for a lot of guy. Born into German aristocracy in 1907, he was a soldier by... More >>

• Spinning Blues Into Lies

  published December 4, 2008

  First, a key spoiler: Cadillac Records is not the story of Chess Records, the blues label started in Chicago in 1950 by brothers Leonard... More >>

• Neither Shaken nor Stirred

  published November 13, 2008

  Those of us who adored Casino Royale, the 2006 reboot of the haggard, self-parodic James Bond franchise, had some trouble trying to... More >>

• Strictly Softcore

  published October 30, 2008

  Ostensibly, Zack and Miri Make a Porno should be money-shot Kevin Smith: Pals make a porn to pay the bills and, in the process of... More >>

• We Rent the Night

  published October 23, 2008

  Pride and Glory doesn't make any effort to disguise precisely what it is: a barely held-together string of vignettes lifted from every cop... More >>

• Sex Crime

  published September 25, 2008

  There's a whole lotta fucking going on in Choke, Clark Gregg's adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's first-person novel about a sex addict... More >>

• Not To Be

  published August 21, 2008

  In its final 10 minutes, Hamlet 2 is little more than chaos, noise, and nonsense, and those are 10 perfectly enjoyable minutes. It's... More >>

• Apocalypse Whatever

  published August 14, 2008

  Early buzz out of Hollywood pegged Tropic Thunder, directed and cowritten by star Ben Stiller, as the end-all and be-all of movie-biz... More >>

• True Bromance

  published August 7, 2008

  On the surface, Pineapple Express offers precisely what it advertises: a roll-'em-up, smoke-'em-up, blow-'em-up bromantic comedy from... More >>

• Going Down

  published July 10, 2008

  At the top, let's be clear about one thing: Journey to the Center of the Earth is more a demo reel than a narrative feature. It's a... More >>

• Superzero

  published July 3, 2008

  The Sixth Sense, starring Bruce Willis as a dead man, was writer/director M. Night Shyamalan's breakthrough, but its follow-up,... More >>

• Al Green

  published June 12, 2008

  Lay It Down is easily the right Rev.'s best in five years — in other words, since his last Blue Note outing. This time around,... More >>

• The Fortress of Sad Decline

  published May 22, 2008

  Here's your hat, Indy, but, really, what's your hurry? Because 19 years after the Last Crusade that clearly wasn't and 15 years after... More >>

• Here Comes the Bride. Yawn.

  published May 1, 2008

  In Made of Honor, Patrick Dempsey plays a conveniently rich and willfully single serial "fornicator" slowly but surely domesticated by his... More >>

• Let's Go to Prison

  published April 24, 2008

  Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg wrote Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle with the novel idea: What if you made a John Hughes movie,... More >>

• Nobody's Baby

  published April 24, 2008

  Could have sworn I've seen this episode of Baby Mama before — like sometime in January 2007, when it was originally titled "The Baby... More >>

• Sad Sack Extraordinaire

  published April 17, 2008

  Jason Segel is responsible for two of the most cringe-inducing, hands-in-front-of-your-face moments in the recent history of television, both... More >>

• Ordinary People

  published April 10, 2008

  Smart people got no reason to live — and, sure, that's not quite how Randy Newman sang it, but the point still stands. Because in Noam... More >>

• Counting Sheep

  published March 27, 2008

  Ben Mezrich's 2002 bestseller Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas For Millions was a smart... More >>

• Three the Hard Way

  published March 13, 2008

  No Country for Old Men (Paramount) "A horror comedy chase" is how a grinning Tommy Lee Jones describes No Country... More >>

• Oscar-Starved

  published March 6, 2008

  Into the Wild (Paramount) Sean Penn waited a good decade before adapting Jon Krakauer's book about Chris... More >>

• Fast and Loose

  published March 6, 2008

  Based on a true story," brags The Bank Job before diving into the clear blue water of the Caribbean, where, in 1970, a topless woman... More >>

• Move Along, Kids

  published February 28, 2008

  Justice League: The New Frontier (Warner Bros.) Based on Darwyn Cooke's comic-book miniseries — a... More >>

• Personal Foul

  published February 28, 2008

  Semi-Pro's much better than Blades of Glory, which wasn't nearly as good as Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,... More >>

• Laughing Pains

  published February 21, 2008

  Margot at the Wedding (Paramount) Margot (Nicole Kidman, or someone who looks just like her) is a fiction writer... More >>