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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British documentary is disturbing, unnerving and wire-to-wire involving — the story of a dream that got so wildly out of hand that it ensnared the dreamer in an intricate trap of his own creation.
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The Body Snatchers remake, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, proves the pulp classic is still startlingly in tune with the U.S. zeitgeist.
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Brightness has never seemed as menacing as it does in Sunshine, a sci-fi nail-biter about a future Earth's scramble to reignite a dying sun. It's the latest from 28 Days Later director Danny Boyle. -
Despite some darkly inspired moments, the fifth of seven Harry Potter movies feels like — well, like the next to the next-to-last installment in a series that's taking its time.
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Special-effects magic makes Hasbro's toys enormously engaging, but the humans they're out to destroy keep slowing things down. If this film were a lot shorter, and if it kept a focus on the toys, it would be hard to argue with.
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Kenneth Turan says director Brad Bird did something audacious — made a major motion picture with a rat for a star. The comedy they've created is imaginative, good-spirited, funny — and brave enough to let the rats be ratlike, even as they charm the audience.
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Hollywood puts the planet in peril again with Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer. The comics were hip enough to last for more than 40 years, but the movie treatment is far from must-see cinema.
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John Carney's unpretentious musical romance is completely winning — with appealing characters, an unforced sense of intimacy and a light-fingered way of mixing music and story.
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Sam Raimi spent a fortune, and its stars strive for naturalism, but Spider-Man 3 proves dramatically less than the sum of its expensive, ill-unified parts.
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Jindabyne is a movie in which friends on a fishing trip find a body, but choose not to report it. It's an Australian film based on a short story by Raymond Carver.
