Jesse Hassenger

Did Hawke become a better actor under the Boyhood director, or did time just pass? Before Sunrise, the third major film by Richard Linklater, opens with an implicit hypothetical question: Based on a chance encounter and some promising chit-chat,…

Toward the end of the horror comedy Dark Shadows, Angelique (Eva Green) begins to chip and crumble. She’s spent most of the movie and, indeed, the better part of two centuries, looking impeccably made up and styled. For her life in the early 1970s,…

When George W. Bush first appears on screen in Adam McKay’s new movie Vice, it’s strange to see him played by Sam Rockwell. This isn’t because Rockwell is miscast—in fact, he’s perfectly cast and quite good in the movie, capturing the empty,…

Because of her reputation as a shapeshifting oddball, Tilda Swinton has become a go-to fantasy casting choice for David Bowie. Yet when Swinton does play a (fictional) rock star in Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash, Guadagnino makes the strategic…

Is Wes Anderson a nerd? In 2018, plenty of people would reach for other words first: hipster, twee, problematic (who isn’t?), or maybe the dreaded catch-all of “quirky.” If Anderson is considered “nerdy,” it’s in that contemporary way in which nearly…

It’s probably not fair to say that Black Panther, the Marvel blockbuster that’s already one of the most popular superhero movies of all time, is most interested in its instantly and rightfully praised villain, Killmonger, played by Michael B. Jordan.…

When Taken turned Liam Neeson into an action star circa 2009, he was both surprisingly believable as a badass and surprisingly old for being so believable. Though the 6-foot, 4-inch Neeson certainly cuts an imposing figure, there are plenty of…

George Clooney has directed a new movie coming out this fall, and the word from the Toronto International Film Festival, where it debuted last week, has not been encouraging. Suburbicon finds Clooney dusting off an old Coen brothers script and…

For a long time, it seemed as if Kirsten Dunst might be hell-bent on becoming America’s sweetheart at any applicable age. In her younger days, she appeared as the girl hero of two different movies, Jumanji and Small Soldiers, that were essentially…

There are no real villains in Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea, The A.V. Club’s favorite movie of last year and a major contender at this Sunday’s Academy Awards. The movie is about grief and the way it puts one particularly bereaved man at…

Among the countless contributions Roger Ebert made to film criticism, the Kevin Kline Mustache Principle may not rank highest, but it has provided a lasting and extremely helpful lens for recognizing one actor’s intentions. Put simply: In movies…

It must be the eyes. There’s wildness in them. I’d seen Michael Shannon in about half a dozen movies before I saw him in World Trade Center, where he plays a real-life Marine who saw the wreckage in Manhattan on 9/11, got in his car, and drove down…

Brian De Palma met his first wife on a movie set. This is not uncommon for people who work in the film industry, but it seems particularly appropriate for De Palma, whose work often takes place in a stylized universe composed in crazy tracking shots,…

Last month, Denzel Washington starred in a remake of The Magnificent Seven. The movie was directed by Antoine Fuqua, who, as any trailer for any Antoine Fuqua-directed movie of the past 15 years will tell you, also directed Training Day, the film for…

If the internet existed 50 or 60 years ago, how many of Old Hollywood’s most beloved stars would be called out for always playing the same part? Actors who can disappear into a role have long been the subject of admiration, yet so few leading…

While Scarlett Johansson has played several characters who ascend to a greater level of consciousness, her professional ascension to major movie-star status was once far from assured. She may currently play one of the only female superheroes in the…

Five years into Noah Baumbach’s film career, he had worked with four actors three times each. His go-to performers Carlos Jacott, Chris Eigeman, John Lehr, and Eric Stoltz formed perhaps the least-heralded indie-movie rep company of the ’90s, nailing…

During his long and storied career, Samuel L. Jackson has worked with a lot of strong, distinctive directors: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Paul Thomas Anderson, M. Night Shyamalan, Joss Whedon, Brad Bird, William…

Adam’s Rib, a 1949 sorta-romantic comedy about feuding married lawyers who take opposite sides of a criminal case, was the seventh of ten collaborations between actress Katharine Hepburn and director George Cukor. It was also the third of five…

There was a time—call it the majority of the ’00s—when George Clooney starred almost exclusively in movies directed by himself, the Coen Brothers, or, most often, Steven Soderbergh (or, barring Soderbergh’s availability, someone else associated with…