Email Author Chris Packham

2012 Stories by Chris Packham

• "My Worst Nightmare": Love Has an Agenda

  published December 26, 2012

  The early, awesome stage of romantic relationships, characterized by firehose neurochemistry, socially off-putting behavior and a lot of... More >>

• "Parental Guidance": Modern Life Is Rubbish

  published December 26, 2012

  In much the same way that pig-romancing hill folk felt slandered by William Denison "Bill" McKinney's performance in Deliverance, the... More >>

• "The Guilt Trip": Seth Rogen Takes his Centrum Silver

  published December 19, 2012

  Once comic actors reach a particular career stage, they often choose one of two paths: A) They stop being funny and start being all Hallmark... More >>

• "North Sea Texas": Falling in Love with the Boy Next Door

  published December 5, 2012

  Recently, popular films about gay characters have started moving beyond the overarching plot about society's acceptance of sexual identity and... More >>

• "Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning": Suffer for the Fights

  published November 28, 2012

  Depending on whether you count direct-to-video releases, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning is either the fourth or sixth film in the... More >>

• "Rise of the Guardians": Adventures with Santa and Co.

  published November 21, 2012

  Unlike such vengeful, justice-dispensing figures as Jehovah and RoboCop, the traditional pantheon of made-up childhood gods are all carrot and... More >>

• "The Big Picture": Thrilling Alienation and False Identification

  published November 21, 2012

  "You're as free as the wind," says Paul Exben (Romain Duris) to the son of a legal client to whom he has offered the choice of drug rehab or... More >>

• "This Must Be the Place": Sean Penn Is Gothed Up and Great

  published November 7, 2012

  If you Google the phrase "Danzig shopping for cat supplies," you'll find links to phone-cam shots of former Misfits singer Glenn Danzig... More >>

• "Lincoln" Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg Ably Fill the Hat

  published November 7, 2012

  There's an unfun tendency in American life to fictionalize our national heroes as rigid statue-people who only speak as though they are... More >>

• "Paranormal Activity 4": Tracking the Rise of Found-Footage Horror

  published October 17, 2012

  This week's Paranormal Activity 4 continues the story of an extended American family whose members own a lot of surveillance cameras,... More >>

• "Bel Borba Aqui": Cool Art, Nasty Arthropods

  published October 17, 2012

  The demolished buildings of Salvador, Brazil, are substrates for public art to one native son. Bel Borba, a mixed-media artist with a huge... More >>

• "Frankenweenie": The Pleasures of Reanimation

  published October 3, 2012

  Ever since Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton has mostly been in the adaptation business, rendering dark and becurlicued Sleepy Hollows,... More >>

• "The Oranges": John Updike's Christmas Vacation

  published October 3, 2012

  Yeah, all right already, we get it about suburbia — it's a topography of middle-age despair hidden under a sunny beige façade.... More >>

• "Bachelorette": Living Large and Then Feeling Bad About It

  published September 5, 2012

  Weddings make such bitchin' film scenarios because the stakes are believably high: If anything goes wrong, social opprobrium, the loss of your... More >>

• "Chicken with Plums": Super-Sad Fantastical Love Story

  published September 5, 2012

  Narrated by Death himself, embodied by the archangel Azraël, Chicken with Plums is the second adaptation of comic book artist... More >>

• White Night

  published September 5, 2012

  Pee-wee’s Playhouse, a Saturday-morning staple for Gen-Xers who were, at the time, way older than the time slot’s intended... More >>

• "For a Good Time, Call ...": Reach Out and Touch

  published August 29, 2012

  Remember way back when Bridesmaids was released, and Manohla Dargis referred to it as "unexpectedly funny"? It's amazing what still... More >>

• "Nuit #1": Canadian Drama Revels in Unsexy Details

  published August 8, 2012

  First-time feature director Anne Émond's Nuit #1 lingers on the combination of hunger and awkwardness that attends the best... More >>

• "Total Recall": Another Joyless, Pointless Remake

  published August 1, 2012

  Total Recall, directed by Len Wiseman, aspires to be less stupid than its 1990 predecessor and kind of succeeds for the first third of... More >>

• "The Amazing Spider-Man": The Spider Becomes a Man -- and a Joy

  published July 4, 2012

  The Amazing Spider-Man, an inexcusably good reboot from director Marc Webb, celebrates the heartwarming arachno-genetic bar mitzvah in... More >>

• "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present": The Naked Gaze

  published July 4, 2012

  For three months in 2010, Serbian-born performance artist Marina Abramovic sat in a chair in a gallery at New York's Museum of Modern Art and... More >>

• "To Rome, with Love": Woody Allen Maintains His Status Quo

  published June 27, 2012

  In Woody Allen's new film, To Rome with Love, people — like, really young people — still talk, improbably, about "neuroses."... More >>