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.
-
Night Watch is Russia's highest grossing film ever, taking in more money in three weeks than the Lord of the Rings finale did in two months. The movie takes a Hollywood-style fantasy thriller about the battle between supernatural forces of good and evil and infuses it with a homegrown Russian soul.
-
In the first aspiring Hollywood blockbuster of the year, Firewall, Harrison Ford stars as a man whose identity theft leads to something more sinister than an overcharged credit card. Critic Kenneth Turan says the thriller's plot outlines and script are depressingly familiar.
-
A Good Woman is based on Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan. But unlike Wilde's play, which is based in Victorian England, the film is set in Italy decades later. Critic Kenneth Turan is worried the story can't survive such a drastic change of scene.
-
The documentary follows three African-American students who get the opportunity to attend an academically rigorous school in Kenya designed to give them a path out of the violence and poverty of inner-city Baltimore.
-
Love stories come and go, but few have the durablity of Tristan & Isolde. People have been fascinated by this Dark Ages tale of star-crossed passion and devotion that would not die. Director Kevin Reynolds has turned out a satisfactory version of this story of manly men and fervent women.
-
Set after the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, Steven Spielberg's film, Munich, follows a secret Israeli squad assigned to track down and kill the 11 Palestinians suspected of having planned the attack. Critic Kenneth Turan says Spielberg's film is about the "murkiest, most divisive of real world issues."
-
If you want to escape the holiday fantasies in theaters for a dose of realistic dysfunction, The Family Stone may be for you. The film, starring Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker and Dermont Mulroney, is an offbeat mixture of comic crises and the bite of the real.
-
The epic film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe has some flaws, the reviewer says. But in general, he finds the movie true to the "sincerity" of the C.S. Lewis book.
-
A power struggle over oil in the Middle East is the backdrop for the new film Syriana, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon. Critic Kenneth Turan says the movie is one of "paradoxes, contradictions and complications... it takes numerous risks, and thrives on them all."
-
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire opens Friday. Critic Kenneth Turan says that new director Mike Newell and his cast have finally done justice to J.K. Rowling's work.