Screen
Take the psycho path
With massive mainstream media marketing rollouts and the box office boons reaped by free social media, movies so rarely surprise us these days. Shock cameos are spoiled in the space of a tweet, while most trailers render buying the proverbial “movie cow” moot when ...
Being near Emma Watson
Reconciling the public’s fascination with Emma Watson’s blossoming sexuality with realizing that the first time she was on screen she was 11 years old is really difficult. Doing so in a movie where her character’s sexuality is fundamentally warped because of an ...
Comedians sleep standing up
A note for the admittedly small subset of folks who swoon at the storytelling magic of This American Life and tingle at the mere mention of Ira Glass’s name: Sleepwalk with Me is charming public radio entertainment channeled into cinemas. Watch out Hollywood ...
Object of my Affleck-tion
It’s easy to thrill people when they don’t know what’s coming. OK, maybe not easy — paging Mr. Shyamalan — but certainly less difficult than whipping up tension in a film based on a decades-old actual incident, the resolution of which is but a Google search away. ...
Margarine-al humor
In the wake a presidential debate that was almost fact-free on one side and nearly lifeless on the other, smearing Butter on one´s eyes seemed like a good option for poll junkies. This allegedly politically charged ensemble comedy promised a send-up of campaign ...
‘Glee’ clubbed
At the point where the fist pump from The Breakfast Club becomes a plot point, shortly after a near-mute Asian girl who ate her own twin in the womb makes snow angels in another girl’s vomit, Pitch Perfect moves from “potential cult classic” to “recommended for any ...
Circular logic
Writer/director Rian Johnson is fantastic at making pretty good movies. 2005’s Brick was a slyly conceived yarn that took 1940s private dick dialogue and plot and affixed them to a modern high-school setting, with middling effect. 2008’s The Brothers Bloom was a ...
Too many Ds
When you remake a movie that originally starred Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider, it’s not a challenge to clear the bar that was set. Limbo-ing beneath it, however, would require a shrink-ray gun. So it is the faintest of all possible praises to say that Dredd 3D...
