Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2009 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Former Retail Giant Blockbuster Struggles With What's Next

  published December 31, 2009

  In a Dallas strip mall, in the neighborhood George W. Bush now calls home, sits a bright and fluorescent Blockbuster that, on this cold... More >>

• The Ten Best Movies of '09

  published December 24, 2009

  1. The Hurt Locker The decade's strongest Iraq movie is also the year's finest action flick, not to mention director Kathryn... More >>

• Did You Hear About the Morgans? Proves Hugh Grant is a Reliable Smartass

  published December 17, 2009

  Let's be honest here: Did You Hear About the Morgans? is multiplex meringue compared to the meat-and-potatoes cinema at this most... More >>

• George Clooney and Up in the Air Steer Clear of the Predictable Route

  published December 3, 2009

  There is something oddly familiar about Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, in which George Clooney plays a commitment-phobic business... More >>

• Father Does Not Know Best When Father Is Robert De Niro in Everybody's Fine

  published December 3, 2009

  Don't be misled by the cheesy, generic poster for Kirk Jones' Everybody's Fine, in which a grinning Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and... More >>

• Pirate Radio Gets a Tame U.S. Release, but We Still Love Rock 'n' Roll

  published November 12, 2009

  Seven months after its theatrical release in the United Kingdom and two months after its DVD debut there, Pirate Radio washes ashore in... More >>

• Law Abiding Citizen Peddles Cheap Revenge Thrills

  published October 15, 2009

  The movie wastes no time: Before the opening credits, a man watches two home invaders slaughter his wife and daughter — and we don't even... More >>

• New in Film: Whip It

  published October 1, 2009

  Drew Barrymore, making her directorial debut, is blunt onscreen and off about her inspirations for this tale of an anguished... More >>

• The Informant! Gets Cute With Massive Corporate Scandal and Blows the Story

  published September 17, 2009

  As evidenced by The Informant!, it's a hell of a tricky thing turning real-life pulp into floss sugar. The story of Archer Daniels... More >>

• Turn It Up

  published September 10, 2009

  Marketed as a guitar summit between The Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White, Davis Guggenheim’s affectionate, intermittently insightful... More >>

• Mike Judge Goes Back to Work With Extract

  published September 3, 2009

  Mike Judge began writing the screenplay for Extract not long after Office Space opened and closed in a matter of weeks in the... More >>

• In the Thick of Satire

  published August 27, 2009

  This deliriously foul-mouthed political satire is set sometime between 2002 and the day after tomorrow; hard to say, given that the country with... More >>

• Love Hurts

  published July 30, 2009

  On the surface, (500) Days of Summer really is no different from, oh, let's say The Proposal, in which Ryan Reynolds and Sandra... More >>

• Victim of Circumstance

  published June 18, 2009

  Fifteen minutes after seeing The Proposal, I'd forgotten I'd seen The Proposal. Well, that's not entirely true: By then, it had... More >>

• Warp Factor 10

  published May 7, 2009

  It's difficult for this longtime Trekkie to review J.J. Abrams' relaunching of the USS Enterprise. It's difficult to dispassionately... More >>

• Scenes From a Mall

  published April 9, 2009

  Observe and Report writer-director Jody Hill makes mean-spirited tragedies that studios market as inane comedies because otherwise no one... More >>

• DreamWorks, in Your Face

  published March 26, 2009

  At the end of 2008, DreamWorks Animation bossman Jeffrey Katzenberg embarked on a cross-country tour, toting 20 minutes' worth of Monsters... More >>

• New in Film

  published March 26, 2009

  The Haunting in Connecticut There's no rest for the dead — or the living — in this laughably hokey haunted-house... More >>

• Eternal Flame

  published March 19, 2009

  Just as we thought the "bromantic comedy" had overstayed its welcome, the genre reaches its high point with I Love You, Man. The subtext is... More >>

• Biggie, Small

  published January 15, 2009

  Notorious, about a crack dealer who becomes an iconic rapper who becomes a tragic legend, is the first film George Tillman Jr. has directed... More >>