The 10 Best Apocalyptic Love Stories by Andrew Osborne Prophets of doom from John the Revelator to Al Gore have been predicting the demise of humanity since we all came down from the trees and turned human in the first place. Yet rather than killing our spirits, it seems the prospect of annihilation mainly just fires up our libidos as we try to live life to the fullest before (to quote another famous doomsayer) "party over, oops, out of time". And so, in tribute to The Walking Dead season finale this Sunday, Nerve salutes the greatest moments of the apocalypse with ten of our favorite "last days" lovers. 1) The Walking Dead (Glenn & Maggie) When city-boy Glenn Rhee (Steven Yeun) gets full-on hot and busy with farmer's daughter Maggie (Laurie Cohan) on a dirty prison floor, it's not so much provocative as…sweet. Maybe [...]...
- 3/27/2013
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
Ranked: Robert Zemeckis Movies From Worst To Best Highs and lows from Forrest Gump to Back to the Future. by Andrew Osborne In the world of A-list Hollywood directors, Robert Zemeckis has always seemed like Steven Spielberg's wise-ass kid brother: somewhat less celebrated for his nostalgic, crowd-pleasing work, even as he generally seems to be having more fun. But now, with Flight already generating Oscar buzz in advance of its November 2 wide release, we're reexamining his whole filmography, and finding it full of non-Spielbergian delights. 15. The Polar Express (2004) Next to helping Forrest Gump steal the Best Picture Oscar away from Pulp Fiction (and apparently deciding it would be a good idea to remake Yellow Submarine... in 3D!), Robert Zemeckis's greatest crime against cinema is his inexplicable devotion to "performance capture" technology. Like one of those theme park rides where the chair shakes while you [...]...
- 11/1/2012
- Nerve
The Six Best and One Worst Movies I Saw at SXSW 2012 Scary cabins, time-travel comedy, and a respectful tribute to a beloved indie classic. by Andrew Osborne If I had to identify a prevailing trend at SXSW this year, it'd probably be semi-nude and even stark-naked fat men (see: Matt Lucas' underwear-clad oddball in Small Apartments, Louis Negin's cackling/free-balling narrator in Keyhole, Steve Zizzis' saggy-chested suburbanite in The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, etcetera). But the other big theme running through this year's films was the consequences of bad choices. So in that spirit, here are my cautious choices for the best and worst movies of SXSW 2012. 1. The Cabin in the Woods Thanks to the 2010 bankruptcy of MGM, director Drew Goddard's inventive horror picture has been locked in a scary basement of legal maneuvering for years, fueling rabid speculation in the online geek community. Yet despite Lionsgate's [...]...
- 3/21/2012
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
Five Reasons To See Jeff Who Lives At Home ...even if you don't think you like mumblecore. by Andrew Osborne Mark Duplass doesn't classify the films he's co-directed with his brother (including this week's Jeff, Who Lives At Home and The Do-Deca-Pentathlon, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival on March 11) as "mumblecore." "It was just a tag that somebody started calling our movies," he explains — and by our, he means not just Duplass Brothers movies, but the work of a new generation of independent filmmakers, including Andrew Bujalski (Beeswax), Lynn Shelton (Humpday), and Joe Swanberg (Hannah Takes The Stairs). "I don't have a problem with people using tags in the press to help group things," Duplass clarifies, though he finds the term mumblecore "a bit reductive. But more importantly, it sounds hoity-toity and exclusionary... I want [...]...
- 3/15/2012
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
Eight Upcoming Movies to Get You Through Winter Avoid the perils of the Hollywood off-season with our survival guide. by Andrew Osborne Interesting indie films tend to sprout in the spring, blockbusters rule the summer, and the classy Oscar-bait shows up in the fall. But winter has long been a cinematic dumping ground where toxic waste is disposed of as quietly as possible. Fortunately, we've compiled a list of some of the more promising flicks to tide you over until The Three Stooges lures the hoi polloi back into theaters. 1. Red Tails (January 20) This historical tale of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen looks to combine old-fashioned war-movie tropes with state-of-the-art dogfight effects. But as executive producer George Lucas bluntly explained on The Daily Show, the real reason to see it is to celebrate heroes largely forgotten by America (as well as a galaxy of black actors too often ignored [...]...
- 1/18/2012
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
Ranked: Steven Spielberg We reassess the entire filmography of Hollywood's flagship director. by Andrew Osborne Spielberg. Love him or hate him, you've got to respect his skill. But really, why would you hate him? Sure, he's made some goopy clunkers. And, yes, he and his Bff George Lucas have come to personify the blockbuster era that crushed the Golden Age of auteur-driven '70s cinema. But the sixty-five-year-old boy wonder is also responsible for some of the most undeniable classics and indelible images in the history of filmmaking — and so, with both Tintin and War Horse just out, it seems like the perfect time for America's de facto director-in-chief to get Ranked. 27. Hook (1991) All of Spielberg's worst traits were on full display in this critically-reviled tale of a grown-up Peter Pan (Robin Williams, of course) learning to reconnect with his inner child — which, in the [...]...
- 1/10/2012
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
A very brief one indeed today, but I did want to help get word out there that the Hitchcock for the Holidays series is running at Chicago's Music Box Theatre through January 4. Ben Sachs in the Reader: "The films have been organized into five thematically-joined double features, making it easier for aspiring scholars to chart the development of key ideas across different periods of Hitchcock's career. The most inspired pairing may be Rope with Strangers on a Train (on December 27 & 28), which contain the strongest gay subtext of any Hitchcock films (Farley Granger, the bisexual star of both films, has interesting things to say about them in his autobiography Include Me Out); though the back-to-back screenings of Rear Window and Rebecca (on December 25 & 26) should bring out the romanticism of the former and the voyeurism of the latter."
Previous entries on Hitchcock; and earlier, in March: Remembering Farley Granger.
Lists. "Once again,...
Previous entries on Hitchcock; and earlier, in March: Remembering Farley Granger.
Lists. "Once again,...
- 12/26/2011
- MUBI
Nerve's 15 Best Movies of 2011 Featuring gay romance, some surprisingly intelligent apes, and a murderous Albert Brooks. by Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne People inclined to complain about the state of cinema didn't have to look very far in 2011, as all the ugly trends of recent years continued. Once again, endless CGI sequels, formulaic romantic comedies, and "origin stories" about guys in tights drifted into theaters, highlighting an ever-more-impressive gap between money spent and fucks given. Yet looking at the movies that crept in around the margins, it wasn't such a bad year at all. Our top fifteen don't seem to add up to a zeitgeist, but they're collective proof that interesting films are still out there if you know where to look. 15. Moneyball Brad Pitt gives the best and most likable performance of his career as Billy Beane, the baseball manager who [...]...
- 12/26/2011
- by Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
Five Reasons Not To Hate Tom Cruise Yes, we came up with five. by Andrew Osborne Yes, everyone experienced a severe case of douche chills when he jumped up and down on Oprah's couch. Plus, he seemed like an egomaniac (emphasis on the maniac) in that creepy Scientology video, and most people suspect he's done something terrible to Katie Holmes. But I'm still seeing Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Because however exhausting he may be to deal with in real life, Tom Cruise is still a fascinating screen presence, for the following reasons. 1. He doesn't even try to disguise his own arrogance. Part of what makes Tom Cruise so hateable is also what makes him such a fascinating screen presence — namely, the fact that he doesn't seem to care in the slightest if we think he's a total dick. Unlike, say, the pre-scandal Mel [...]...
- 12/20/2011
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
The Five Most Terrifying Pregnancies in Cinema History Brace yourself for Breaking Dawn. By Andrew Osborne Impending parenthood is scary enough, but the real white-knuckle moments are typically associated with the anxieties and complications of pregnancy and childbirth. Thus, as a public service to Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson's nervous, mopey vam-parents in this week's Breaking Dawn (Part One), we've compiled a list of the five worst-case scenarios to expect when you're expecting. (And no, we didn't include Eraserhead — bonus points for the first commenter to figure out why.) 1. Rosemary's Baby (1968) The mother of all terrifying pregnancy flicks features Mia Farrow's title character cooped up in a spooky Manhattan apartment building (realistically portrayed by The Dakota, which later achieved infamy as a setting for real-world evil with the murder of John Lennon in 1980). No expectant mother has ever received worse pre-natal care [...]...
- 11/17/2011
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
The Fifty Greatest Cult Movies of All Time It's midnight somewhere. By Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne "Cult movie" is a hard thing to pin down. For the purposes of this list — celebrating the tenth anniversary of Donnie Darko — we've put a premium on the intensity and selectiveness of a movie's appeal. We've also limited each director to one film. See you at midnight! 1. Barbarella (1968) The first R-rated comic-book movie stars Jane Fonda as a planet-hopping secret agent who has trouble keeping her clothes on. It was directed by Fonda's then-husband, Roger Vadim, who must have seen it as an opportunity to spend nine million dollars' of producer Dino De Laurentiis' money just to tell every ticket-buying man in the world, "Eat your heart out!" — P.N. 2. The Big Lebowski (1998) Any movie can have fans, and just about any science [...]...
- 10/27/2011
- by Phil Nugent and Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
Blue Estate #6
Point of No Return
Original Story by Viktor Kalvachev, Kosta Yanev
Script by Andrew Osborne
Art by Viktor Kalvachev, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, Robert Valley
Colors by Viktor Kalvachev
Cover by Viktor Kalvachev
Image Comics
Release Date: October 12, 2011
Cover Price: $2.99
Ever since I began reading Blue Estate it's felt like with each new issue I've been holding my breath waiting for a lull in action or dialogue, or anything to give me a moment's rest. Since issue #1, Blue Estate has been delivering a virtually unending line of pulp action and Blue Estate #6: Point of No Return is no exception. From the start, creator Viktor Kalvachev and his five-man team have made it their personal mission to drag us as readers down into the literal hell that is Los Angeles on the brink of a gang war. In Blue Estate #6 we are introduced and reacquainted with some of L.
Point of No Return
Original Story by Viktor Kalvachev, Kosta Yanev
Script by Andrew Osborne
Art by Viktor Kalvachev, Toby Cypress, Nathan Fox, Robert Valley
Colors by Viktor Kalvachev
Cover by Viktor Kalvachev
Image Comics
Release Date: October 12, 2011
Cover Price: $2.99
Ever since I began reading Blue Estate it's felt like with each new issue I've been holding my breath waiting for a lull in action or dialogue, or anything to give me a moment's rest. Since issue #1, Blue Estate has been delivering a virtually unending line of pulp action and Blue Estate #6: Point of No Return is no exception. From the start, creator Viktor Kalvachev and his five-man team have made it their personal mission to drag us as readers down into the literal hell that is Los Angeles on the brink of a gang war. In Blue Estate #6 we are introduced and reacquainted with some of L.
- 10/20/2011
- by The Geeks of Doom
- Geeks of Doom
The Five Best Movies About Cutthroat Elections We celebrate The Ides of March with the greatest insider-politics movies ever made. By Andrew Osborne Scandal, betrayal, shocking twists... and that's just the latest Sarah Palin tweet. Campaign politics are always cutthroat — and so, in honor of George Clooney's new political thriller The Ides of March (as well as the millionth Republican primary debate of the season), we hereby throw our hats in the ring with five candidates for the best election film in history. 1. A Face In The Crowd (1957) Those familiar with Andy Griffith's signature TV roles as a small-town sheriff or a sensible Southern lawyer may be shocked by the actor's fearsome performance as a ruthless kingmaker in Elia Kazan's scarily prophetic potboiler. Hiding behind a folksy image, Griffin's cynical, monomaniacal demagogue "Lonesome" Rhodes manipulates the media to boost the fortunes [...]...
- 10/4/2011
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
The Six Best Anna Faris Scenes, In Movies Ranging From Great to Unwatchable The best work from our favorite star of terrible comedies. By Andrew Osborne Despite some questionable career choices, Anna Faris may wind up following in the A-list footsteps of Cameron Diaz (the very actress she parodied in Lost In Translation with such dead-on, guilt-inducing precision). Why? Because the goofy blonde star of this week's rom-com What's My Number? has great moments in great movies, and even when the movies are bad, she's still pretty great in them. Consider the evidence: 1. Cindy's explosive sex in Scary Movie (2000) After watching Faris blasted to the ceiling by a geyser of man jam in Scary Movie, your first thought probably wasn't, "Now there's a promising talent." On the other hand, by pushing the gross-out envelope way beyond Cameron Diaz's "hair [...]...
- 9/29/2011
- by Andrew Osborne
- Nerve
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