Dustin Hoffman

Latest Articles

Review: Luck

HBO goes to the races
You get the feeling that Milch and Mann just want to show off what they know about horse racing. When one of Marcus's crew keeps screaming out during the big Pick Six race, "What's going on!?," he speaking for the audience.
By JON GARELICK | January 24, 2012

Review: Straw Dogs

Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic
Remaking, polishing, and in effect housebreaking what should've remained untamed and feral, Rod Lurie's new version of the Peckinpah classic follows the original's story beats closely, and so the devil is in the details.
By MICHAEL ATKINSON | September 20, 2011

Review: Barney's Version

Tale of a sad-sack chick magnet
The title narrator of Mordecai Richler's novel has the virtues of consistency and a compelling, comic voice — a TV producer with three blighted marriages and a murder rap behind him, he's a prick and proud of it.
By PETER KEOUGH | February 24, 2011

Review: Little Fockers

A transparent cash grab for everyone involved
Mean Streets , Taxi Driver , and . . . Little Fockers ?
By BRETT MICHEL | December 22, 2010

Review: Fighting

He’s a muscle-bound clod and she’s a vapid cliché
Call this a guide to recognizing your sophomore slump. Dito Montiel won the Directing Award at Sundance with his autobiographical 2006 debut, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints , but that film had Robert Downey Jr. and Chazz Palminteri.
By DAVID WILDMAN | April 28, 2009

Review: Last Chance Harvey

A Lifetime TV movie with better leads
Between them, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson have four Oscars, so it's hardly surprising to see them paired up in director Joel Hopkins's attempt at Oscar bait.
By BRETT MICHEL | January 13, 2009

Anti-depressant cinema

The screen offers relief from a world of woe
The screen offers relief from a world of woe
By PETER KEOUGH | January 09, 2009

When men were men

Sam Peckinpah at the Harvard Film Archive
Since Sam Peckinpah’s untimely death at the age of 59, he has acquired such legendary status that it’s startling to remember that he made only 14 films over a period of 22 years.
By STEVE VINEBERG | September 03, 2008

Kung Fu Panda

A colorful wuxia comedy
The thin script is light on length and surprise, heavy on tike-pleasing jokes and action.
By BRETT MICHEL | June 04, 2008

American original

Arthur Penn at the Harvard Film Archive
During the great American renaissance period in movies, Hollywood was in the hands of the counterculture.
By STEVE VINEBERG | January 29, 2008

Defending the universally loathed

The Phoenix looks with loving eyes at some of the worst people, places, and things in the world — and gives them a big hug
Forsaken entities deserve a second chance.
By PHOENIX STAFF | January 14, 2008

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium

Meet Super Creep
This one’s a lot to sit through.
By MARK BAZER | November 14, 2007

Home grown terror

Cathy Wilkerson's memoir of the Weather Underground recalls a time when revolution seemed possible
Cathy Wilkerson, 62-year-old math teacher and mother of one, was famous long ago, as a member of the radical political collective Weatherman.
By CLIF GARBODEN | October 25, 2007

Thirtysomething

tick, tick ... BOOM! at New Rep; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by BTW; American Buffalo at WHAT
When Jonathan Larson, the Pulitzer-winning composer of Rent , wrote tick, tick . . . BOOM! , he could not have known what the “boom” would be.
By CAROLYN CLAY | October 03, 2007

Midnight paparazzo?

Delirious over Delirious; plus underground
Midnight Cowboy , that Oscar-winning classic of subterranean New York City, gets the homage it deserves with the wry, amusing Delirious.
By GERALD PEARY | August 28, 2007

Potter-schmotter!

25 fantasy films that lock horns, swords, and wands with Harry Potter
No reading required.
By ELLEE DEAN AND MADDY MYERS | July 24, 2007

Snow Cake

Marc Evan's mawkish soap opera
The real Oscar candidate here is Alan Rickman as a restrained and sardonic stranger with a mystery past.
By PETER KEOUGH | May 29, 2007

Table manners

In blackjack experience teaches, intuition sustains
My first blackjack experience came as a newly minted college grad.
By MARK JURKOWITZ | April 29, 2007

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Distilling Jean-Baptiste Grenouille
How to distill the essence of Tom (Lola rennt) Tykwer’s handsome rendition of Patrick Süskind’s morbidly satirical 1985 novel about Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, an unloved serial murderer/parfumier possessed of a preternatural olfactory sense, without being as tedious as the film?
By BRETT MICHEL | January 03, 2007

Flashbacks: November 24, 2006

The Boston Phoenix has been covering the trends and events that shape our times since 1966.
These selections, culled from our back files, were compiled by Dan Peleschuk, Ian Sands, and Eva Wolchover.
By FLASHBACKS | November 21, 2006

Ken Norton: A victim of tradition

Ali won, but his challenger didn’t lose
This article originally appeared in the October 5, 1976 issue of the Boston Phoenix.
By GEORGE KIMBALL | November 14, 2006

Stranger than Fiction

Submits to the temptations of clichés and bathos
What’s stranger than fiction? Some might say meta-fiction, the “avant-garde” genre that’s actually older than Don Quixote, in which a work of fiction self-consciously refers to its own artifice. Watch the trailer for Stranger than Fiction (QuickTime)
By PETER KEOUGH | November 10, 2006