Click here to listen to the flashback interview with Sean Durkin for MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE. It would be too easy to pigeonhole THE IRON CLAW as a gloss on toxic masculinity in our culture. To be sure, that element is mightily present in Sean Durkin’s poetic tale of fathers and sons. Based on the… Read More »
FIRESTARTER
A little game I play while watching very bad movies is imagining the joy I will have during the later conversation that I will have about it with John Wilson, Founder and Head Berry of the Golden Raspberry Awards Foundation during our annual interview. The Razzies, as their award is known, even has a special… Read More »
THE BEACH BUM
There are precisely two redeeming features in Harmony Korine’s latest work, THE BEACH BUM. One, and I don’t care if this is a spoiler or not, the cat is just fine as the end credits roll. Two, Martin Lawrence as the dolphin-loving Captain Whack. He’s so good, in fact, that one hopes for a spin-off… Read More »
BAYWATCH
One comes away from BAYWATCH wondering many things, none of them good, one of them why Spongebob Squarepants had to be involved. Based on the television phenomenon that swept the world a few decades back, this cinematic leap is neither faithful to the original, nor is it a loving spoof of same. It fails to… Read More »
MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES
Based on the real adventures of the Stangle brothers, MIKE AND DAVE NEED WEDDING DATES is a raunchy romp that is fearless in how it skirts the shoals of sleaze before it wades right in. When it does, though, it’s with an amiable nature governing the hijinks and more than a few moments that are… Read More »
DIRTY GRANDPA
We will commence with the flensing of DIRTY GRANDPA momentarily. Before we begin, though, a brief summary of the plot of Mel Brooks’ THE PRODUCERS. In that film, more the original rather than the musical remake, we were delighted by the inspired but appalling behavior of producer Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom, his hapless accountant turned… Read More »
ME AND ORSON WELLES
Click here to listen to the interview with Richard Linklater and Christian McKay (18:18). At the center of ME AND ORSON WELLES is Christian McKay’s performance as Welles during his reign as the enfant terrible of New York in the late 1930s. He is not so much doing an impersonation of him as he is… Read More »
ME AND ORSON WELLES
Click here to listen to the interview with Richard Linklater and Christian McKay (18:18). At the center of ME AND ORSON WELLES is Christian McKay’s performance as Welles during his reign as the enfant terrible of New York in the late 1930s. He is not so much doing an impersonation of him as he is… Read More »
NEIGHBORS
It has been said that some of our contemporary malaise stems from the fact that we have, as a culture, lost the traditional markers to separate childhood from adulthood. The bar- or bat-mitzvah is not the assumption of adult responsibility so much as a party. The confirmation is a new set of clothes and spiritual… Read More »
CHARLIE ST. CLOUD
CHARLIE ST. CLOUD is a middling, innocuous film, rife with woozy golden sunlight and swelling syrupy music invoked to create the emotions that the film itself fails to ignite. For all the distraught characters, the film itself deftly sidesteps any attempts to explore the further reaches of passions, of romance or of grief, instead opting for… Read More »