Dan Kois

The single advantage the awful Twilight movies have over Stephenie Meyer’s awful-but-gripping novels is that, unlike the books' sad sack, movie Bella Swan is a spiky, populist heroine. On film, Kristen Stewart beautifully underplays (or, for all I know, overplays to the absolute peak of her abilities) Bella’s deadpan ordinariness,......

One scene captures the tricky tonal balance of cancer comedy 50/50. Adam, the straightedge radio producer played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, has just finished his first round of chemo. It was tough, but the kindly gents IV'd next to him made it easier by sharing their pot brownies. As the Bee......

The two hours and 34 minutes of Transformers: Dark of the Moon are loaded with unimaginable violence, but only one spasm left the audience at the theater where I watched it speechless. They cheered the robot-on-robot slugfests, rendered in terabyte-straining slow motion and splashing Decepticon blood (oil?). The destruction of......

A teenage witch stands trembling behind her unsuspecting mother and father, wand raised. Obliviate, she whispers, and her parents' eyes go glassy, their memories erased. On the mantel, the girl's image disappears from the family's photos. Blinking back tears, she walks into the street, the link between herself and her......