Email Author Robert Wilonsky

2009 Stories by Robert Wilonsky

• Three Critics, One List, 10 Best: J. Hoberman, Robert Wilonsky and Scott Foundas put their minds together and come up with their favorite films of the year. Let's hear it for teamwork!

  published December 23, 2009

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

• Best of the Decade: Our film reviewers recap their favorites of the last ten years

  published December 23, 2009

  Looking back on a decade dominated by the movie franchise — Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars and Spider-Man, to name... More >>

• Rent a Wreck: For a former video-store giant, not such a blockbuster decade

  published December 23, 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 Thursday... More >>

• The year's 10 best movies and more: 2009 in film!

  published December 23, 2009

  Three Village Voice Media critics agree: More >>

• Destination Unknown: Up in the Air steers clear of the predictable route, lands the emotion

  published December 9, 2009

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

• Meet the Parent: Father does not know best when father is De Niro in Everybody's Fine

  published December 2, 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 >>

• Sinking Ship: 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 U.K., and two months after its DVD debut there, Pirate Radio washes ashore in U.S.... More >>

• No Exclamation Point Necessary: The Informant! gets cute with massive corporate scandal and blows the story

  published September 16, 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 >>

• Labor Pains: With Extract, Mike Judge goes back to work

  published September 2, 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 >>

• Not Bad for Government Work: Spoofing the runup to war, In the Loop is political satire done right

  published August 5, 2009

  In the Loop doesn't necessarily mean you're in the know. In Armando Iannucci's movie, a satire of the run-up to war with a Middle... More >>

• Top Chef: In praise of the Julia half of Julie & Julia

  published August 5, 2009

  It was the best of movies. It was the worst of movies. Which is to say: There’s half of a great movie in Julie & Julia -- but since... More >>

• Victim of Circumstance: Once more down the aisle with The Proposal

  published June 17, 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 simply... More >>

• Grounded: Up soars in entirely unexpected ways

  published May 27, 2009

  First of all, Up is not a movie about a cranky old coot who, with the help of a roly-poly Boy Scout, finds his inner child during... More >>

• Warp Factor Ten: J.J. Abrams' Star Trek: proof that a franchise can live long and prosper

  published May 6, 2009

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

• Scenes from a Mall: Seth Rogen's rent-a-cop rides the bipolar express in Observe and Report

  published April 8, 2009

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

• Biggie, Small: Notorious B.I.G., made B.L.A.N.D.

  published January 14, 2009

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