Screen
‘Couples Retreat’ a waste of talent, unfunny
Director Peter Billingsley had a tough assignment: take four suburban couples and put them through a series of "relationship building" challenges that were thought-provoking, poignant, revealing and funny. In attempting to accomplish this, he makes everyone a crass ...
Send in the clowns
Another summer is upon us, and that means it’s time for another season of silent film at Chautauqua.
For those unfamiliar with the silent...
reel to reel | Week of Oct. 27, 2011
50/50 Though it’s a cancer film, the tender and funny 50/50 addresses its subject with a refreshing lack of melodrama. Based on the true story of Will Reiser, a comedy writer, the movie follows Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who gets diagnosed with the C-word. ...
Hocus poking
If you were to divide your ticket price by the number of semi-nude male pelvic thrusts in the faces of women spectators, each hump costs you less than a penny. At times during Magic Mike XXL, I felt like I needed a “horny translator.” That is to say, when Channing ...
Make way for yesterday
The movies started small. So small that only one person at a time could watch them. The year was 1892, and Thomas Edison and his colleague William Kennedy Laurie Dickson discovered that if you spun sequential photographs in a small box, you could create the illusion ...
The power of discussion
The “road trip” might be the ultimate American movie trope — the vast expanse of the continental United States providing a vivid backdrop while the confines of a vehicle pressure-cook characters in the comedy and drama they need to discover the intricacies of ...
Not genius, but still good
The most startling shot in Paranormal Activity 3 is something even the film’s determined unbelievers would concede to be damnably effective...
