And so with JOKER: FOLIE A DEUX, we return to the tragedy that is Arthur Fleck and his abuse at the hands of a social safety net that failed him. As refracted through the prism of Arthur’s fractured psyche, and that of his alter ego, Joker, the world of Gotham City is a violent place… Read More »
JOKER
It is, perhaps, a truism that every generation gets the Batman or Superman that they need/deserve. With Todd Philips’ JOKER, though, we get more than a cultural gloss of the zeitgeist. We get a funhouse mirror that lurks deep within a house of horrors that is an extrapolation of what happens when the 1% of… Read More »
WAR DOGS
The problem with WAR DOGS is that it refuses to decide what it wants to be. Jittering uncertainly between farce and melodrama, it achieves a few moments of sublime absurdity as it satirizes the business of war by hewing to, and exposing the facts of, said endeavor’s economics. Yet, when it decides to tug at… Read More »
DUE DATE
Nitpickers may have a qualm or two about DUE DATE. There are certainly loose ends abounding by the time the film comes to a close. Even for those pickers of nits, though, this anti-buddy picture that pits the intractable against the inane works so well, thanks to co-stars Robert Downey, Jr. and Zack Galifianakis, that… Read More »
HANGOVER PART II THE
The makers of THE HANGOVER 2 knew that they would have to up the ante considerably to justify another long strange trip with The Wolfpack. Alas, rather than wait for a suitably upped ante, or any ante at all, they decided to do a retread of the original, this time without the laughs, substituting humor… Read More »
HANGOVER III, THE
In this age of sequels and sequels to sequels there has come to be a standard clause in many contracts. If a film is a hit, the principals involved are obligated to take part in further installments of the story. Hence THE HANGOVER II, which substituted high-stages tomfoolery for the endearing character-driven nonsense of the… Read More »
STARSKY & HUTCH
I think I know what happened here. Someone came up with three really good jokes and decided that an entire film could be created around them. For insurance, that same someone decided to slap those jokes into a big-screen version of a 70s television series, hoping that the identification would also bring in a ready-made… Read More »
THE SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS
Based on the 1960 film THE SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRESL OF HOW TO WIN WITHOUT ACTUALLY CHEATING!, which was, in turn, very loosely based on the 18th century play by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, THE SCHOOL FOR SCOUNDRELS never deviates for a moment from the textbook arc for tales such as these. Loser at life, love, and… Read More »