Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2003 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Forget It

  published December 24, 2003

  Seems a little early for a remake of Minority Report, but when your movie's all about seeing and forgetting the future, who's gonna... More >>

• The Man With No Brains

  published December 24, 2003

  Steve Martin is a humor writer for the New Yorker -- perhaps you've read some of his pieces, among them "Changes in the Memory After Fifty"... More >>

• A Fan's Notes

  published December 10, 2003

  This being the end of the year, and since none of the people I wanted to write about this week felt it necessary to return any of my calls, from... More >>

• Dance This Mess Around

  published December 3, 2003

  Honey is one of those movies you will see (or not, whatever), swear you've seen before in several other guises and incarnations,... More >>

• Comics From the Front

  published December 3, 2003

  Maybe you know the feeling. Maybe it struck you one morning as you stared in the mirror before trundling off to the job you hate, or maybe it hit... More >>

• The "S" Word

  published November 26, 2003

  Bad Santa, in which Billy Bob Thornton plays a drunken department-store Santa who repeatedly swears at children, pisses... More >>

• Indian Giver

  published November 26, 2003

  In director Ron Howard's The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones' Samuel Jones takes his place among the oldest archetypes in the Western genre... More >>

• Free Will

  published November 5, 2003

  Even when people were watching Will Ferrell on television every Saturday night, they weren't seeing Will Ferrell. They saw no more than a... More >>

• The Boss

  published October 22, 2003

  On October 12, BBC America aired the second-season premiere of The Office, the beloved mockumentary that follows paper-selling rats 'round... More >>

• A Ball, Screwed

  published October 8, 2003

  It's beginning to look as though the films of George Clooney are less works of fiction and more the products of documentary crews following around... More >>

• Half Great

  published October 8, 2003

  The opening credits insist that Kill Bill: Volume 1 is "Quentin Tarantino's 4th film," when it's actually his 3.5th. This is too... More >>

• A Slice o' Hell

  published October 8, 2003

  Sin noticias de Dios, retitled Don't Tempt Me for U.S. release, didn't fare too well in Spain upon its release... More >>

• It's a Black Thing

  published October 1, 2003

  Director Richard Linklater's School of Rock imagines, sort of, what might have become of voluble rock snob Barry the morning after... More >>

• Time and Again

  published October 1, 2003

  Out of Time, in which we're to believe 48-year-old Denzel Washington and 32-year-old Sanaa Lathan were high-school sweethearts,... More >>

• The Reel Who

  published September 24, 2003

  The publicity materials sent in advance of the at-long-last release of The Kids Are Alright on DVD suggest that the maker of the 1979... More >>

• David Bowie

  published September 17, 2003

  At this late date, only the acolytes await the latest Bowie release, the casual fan having been waved off long ago by slow sell-backs masquerading... More >>

• Con Heir

  published September 10, 2003

  When Nicolas Cage plays still and sullen -- a man possessed by self-loathing and melancholy in Adaptation, say, or the landlocked angel in... More >>

• Twist of Fate

  published September 10, 2003

  A film starring Bob Dylan -- five more frightening words you'd be hard-pressed to put into the same sentence, even among those who forgave the man... More >>

• Stupor Man

  published August 27, 2003

  Harvey Pekar, star of a long-running comic-book series he writes and others illustrate, is reminded early in American Splendor... More >>

• See Dick, and Tom, Run

  published August 27, 2003

  A respected comedy writer sits over lunch with a man who, in the late 1960s, was very, very famous. This man, slender and balding, was a comedian... More >>

• Lit Up

  published August 20, 2003

  On Sunday, HBO will air the final episode of what has been the most consistently entertaining--and aggravating--show of the summer television... More >>

• For Love of the Game

  published August 13, 2003

  He knows there are people, too many, who do not like him. He has to know. They've told him to his face--the studio executives who slice and... More >>

• Macy Gray

  published July 30, 2003

  Someone recently wrote that Macy Gray's Id -- the album, though what she sells is what she thinks -- didn't move because of its being... More >>

• You, Spy

  published July 30, 2003

  David Wolstencroft moved from London to Los Angeles in November, and not only so he could rise each morning for a game of tennis--though there is... More >>

• Virtual Family

  published July 23, 2003

  Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over continues a fine tradition of turning third installments in film series into three-dimensional efforts;... More >>