Kenneth Turan
Kenneth Turan is the film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR's Morning Edition, as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide, and served as the Times' book review editor.
A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, he is the co-author of Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke. He teaches film reviewing and non-fiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. His most recent books are the University of California Press' Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made and Never Coming To A Theater Near You, published by Public Affairs Press.
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Bill Murray plays Franklin D. Roosevelt in the new movie Hyde Park on Hudson. Critic Kenneth Turan says Murray's work beautifully conveys the notion of the chief executive as seductive star performer who counts on his charm to get his way.
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In Trouble with the Curve, Clint Eastwood plays Gus Lobel, a venerable scout for the Atlanta Braves who finds it increasingly difficult to mask the creeping ravages of old age. Gus is a cantankerous coot who trips over furniture because he is on the way to going blind, a condition he understandably tries to hide from his boss Pete, played by John Goodman.
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To expand Dr. Seuss' slim volume to theatrical feature length, a whole lot of plot and heaping handfuls of characters needed to be invented. These new individuals are for the most part unpleasant, and the new aspects of the story are forced.
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The new film Act of Valor blurs the line between the real and the unreal something fierce. The movie shot genuine SEAL training exercises, but the script couldn't be more generic.
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December is Oscar bait season at the movies, when there's a surge of films coming into theaters before the end of the year to qualify for the Academy Awards. One of the movies in that race opens Friday: Black Swan.
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Roman Polanski's deliciously unsettling new film, The Ghost Writer, is a dark pearl of a movie, made with the flair and precision of a director suddenly returned to the height of his powers. Kenneth Turan says it could spark a creative renaissance for the controversial filmmaker.
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It's a proven movie formula: Take a popular series of books for kids, turn them into movies and watch the dollars roll in. It's worked for Harry Potter and Twilight. Now, Percy Jackson and the Olympians gets its turn on the big screen. There's a lot of classical mythology that can be learned from the movie but that may be the best thing that can be said about it.
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One of the surest signs of spring is the appearance of comic book movies in theaters everywhere. Hugh Jackman is back as the edgy Logan, aka Wolverine, in a fast, loud origin-myth of a movie designed to cash in on the fanboy fervor that greeted the three X-Men films.
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The new movie Coraline is the story of a little girl who follows a secret passage into an alternate universe. It is the first stop-motion animated film to be conceived and shot in 3-D.
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Tell No One is a French thriller that was a hit in Europe, but it had a hard time finding distribution in the United States. Now it's been out for some weeks, and its audience is growing through strong word-of-mouth.