The Vegan Doughnut Shop (HTML, PDF), an original short story by Tony Macklin.
"The Vegan Doughnut Shop is one of those rare stories that features characters you want to know about, dialogue that makes you laugh and think and a recurring puzzle that keeps you guessing until the end. It's a great read." -- Al Bernstein
 | Haywire  February 5, 2012 What does a director do when the star of his movie is not an accomplished actress? Director Steven Soderbergh faces that obstacle in Haywire, which stars Gia Carano, the Mixed Martial Arts star. He goes to great lengths to protect h ... more |
 | Coriolanus  February 5, 2012 Ralph Fiennes has created a slashing, sprawling version of Shakespere's Coriolanus. It's muscular Shakespeare. It's trimmed down - but has themes and a sensibility that fit into today's society and world. |
 | Undefeated February 4, 2012 At its best, Undefeated is a Hail Mary TD pass. It recently received an Oscar nomination as Best Documentary feature. Other times, it's a routine punt. Undefeated is an anthem of decency and empathy. It's also about l ... more |
 | Albert Nobbs January 25, 2012 2011 was the year of the actress. At least five or six female performances perhaps were superior to any male performance last year. These were Michelle Williams in My Week with Marilyn, Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia, R ... more |
 | A Dangerous Method  January 21, 2012 A Dangerous Method is a lustreless squabble. Much of the essence of drama is conflict - often verbal. A Dangerous Method, based on actual figures was a book, then a play, and now it's a film, but somewhere in the long ... more |
 | Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows  January 14, 2012 Dear Guy Ritchie: My name is Robin Hood. I desperately need your help. I need you as a director to do for me what you did for Sherlock Holmes. I need to be brought into today's world of short attention spans, nonreading ... more |
 | War Horse January 8, 2012 Every once in a while, one needs unbridled sentimentality. Director Steven Spielberg and War Horse fill that need. War Horse is a combination of The Wizard of Oats and Gone with the Whinny. Sentimentality is ... more |
 | We Need to Talk About Kevin  January 5, 2012 Spoiler alert: Watching the movie We Need to Talk About Kevin will make you feel like hell. We Need to Talk About Kevin is a raw, gruelling, disturbing nightmare. I dare you to try to forget it. If one goes to ... more |
 | The Iron Lady December 31, 2011 The Iron Lady is an example of an actress being so much better than the film she's in. Meryl Streep, as Margaret Thatcher, presides with grand humanity, over a film that is pretty much a shambles. Streep transcends a med ... more |
 | Josh Bell hates everything: The best movies of 2011 December 27, 2011 Film critic and historian Tony Macklin joins Josh to wrap up the year with their picks for the best movies of 2011, from sci-fi Westerns to meditations on the end of the world. Ed note: Listen to this audio interview by clicking the &# ... more |
For more reviews, scroll to the top of the page and use the links on the left to either search or browse by date, title, or rating.
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Tony Macklin is a freelance film critic. A current member of the Las Vegas Film Critics Society, he is a former film and literature professor at the University of Dayton, and the former editor of the filmcrit magazine Film Heritage. His articles and reviews have been most recently featured at Rotten Tomatoes and The Internet Movie Database, as well as in the Bright Lights Film Journal and The Fayetteville Free Weekly.
Tony's well-received book, Voices from the Set: The Film Heritage Interviews (2000), includes his 1970s interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, Martin Scorsese, Alan Rudolph, Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah, John Wayne, Edith Head, Stockard Channing, Richard Baskin, and others. It's an excellent read for anyone who loves film.
Since 1972, and in every decade since, Tony's picks for best films of all time have been included in the British Film Institute's Critics' Top 10 Poll. Published in BFI's international film magazine, Sight and Sound, the most recent Critics' Top 10 Poll was published in 2002.
Tony's votes are also included in the American Film Institute's lists of bests, including Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Comedies, 100 Greatest Movies, and more.