Screen
Only kinda good, fellas
Nothing brings back memories of Sean Penn’s history as a serial domestic abuser like watching him revel in a man being drawn-and-quartered by automobiles. What a weird choice to take a cheesy, scene-chewing, 1940s mob-boss role at this point in his career. Cross-...
Royal triumph
Imagine you’re second in line for the throne of England, right behind your selfish, womanizing brother, your father the King is in ill health, and you have a terrible stutter. Your father despises you for the impediment, your country is poised to enter World War II, ...
Meta-references are not always good
In the first few minutes of Scream 4, the teenage girls home by themselves on a dark night are watching a DVD and discussing the merits and demerits of the Saw franchise, which one of the girls refers to as “torture porn,” and then brrrrrrrrrrrrp brrrrrrrrrrrrp goes ...
Singing on the ice
I admired much of the original Happy Feet (2006), but five years later, I’m still considering suing its makers for emotional distress...
Stilled action
Like passionless martial coitus or a zombie doing Zumba, Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass simply go through the motions with Jason Bourne, a...
Losers, yet fun
Is there something written that good, enjoyable films have to make sense, be internally consistent and not have dumb continuity gaffes? I hope not, because that perfectly describes my reaction to The Losers, yet another Hollywood film based on a graphic novel. This...
Metal Lurching
To walk in to The Man with the Iron Fists by choice is to give up your right to bitch about story and character. This is a movie written and directed by The RZA, a member of the powerhouse rap group The Wu-Tang Clan; produced by Eli Roth, the guy who made Hostel; and...
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...
Crass and fun
It`s not good to start a review by saying that the film wasn’t anywhere near as bad or as stupid as I was afraid it’d be, but that’s exactly how I felt about the inane satire MacGruber. Crude and sophomoric, it still had lots of laughs and a surprisingly polished ...
