Just because you >can< render an animated classic into a live-action CGI extravaganza doesn’t mean that you should. Case in point, PINOCCHIO. It’s not an awful film but bringing the animated characters into the real world doesn’t add anything to the story of a little wooden puppet who dreams of being a real boy. Rather,… Read More »
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA
HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA: TRANSFORMANIA is a relentlessly obvious and overplayed exercise in draining the last dregs from a moribund franchise. Let me put it this way. Adam Sandler, not known for discriminating taste in projects, took a pass on this material that continues the saga of Drac, the vampiric proprietor of the titular establishment that caters… Read More »
THE PREDATOR
One comes to a Shane Black film with high hopes. They are not always rewarded, but when he comes through with films like KISS KISS BANG BANG, or the criminally underappreciated THE GOOD GUYS, the results are quirky, clever, and delightfully original. If you haven’t seen them, choose either, or both, instead of THE PREDATOR.… Read More »
WHY HIM?
Long before he was mild-mannered chemistry teacher turned fearsome drug lord on Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston made his mark in television comedy by, among other things, keeping Malcolm in the middle, and tending to Seinfeld’s teeth. Those comedic chops stand him in good stead for WHY HIM?, an intermittently hilarious hybrid of the buddy film… Read More »
DON’T THINK TWICE
At one point in Mike Birbiglia’s DON’T THINK TWICE, a character opines that your 20s are for hope, and your 30s are for realizing how dumb that hope was. Yet this finely observed tragi-comedy of art, commerce, and finding happiness takes a more compassionate view of its characters, an improv group that is having the… Read More »