WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS is a perfectly likeable, perfectly forgettable film with a creaky plot and terrific chemistry between its stars, Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. It attempts nothing novel in its retelling of the couple who don’t realize that they are perfect for each other, aside from positing an unsavory new popcorn topping. Then… Read More »
HAMLET 2
Where do dreams go to die? That’s the question posed at the beginning of HAMLET 2, a comedy about the triumph of enthusiasm over talent. The answer to that question is Tucson, Arizona, at least for Dana Marschz (Steve Coogan), a spectacularly untalented actor turned equally untalented drama teacher at a high school there. Driven… Read More »
MICMACS (MICMACS A TIRE-LARIGOT)
There are many ways to depict evil on screen. Many ways to show not just the evil itself, but the subtler malfunctions of the soul that make a person evil. In MICMACS, Jean-Pierre Jeunet (AMELIE), has chosen to parse it with shrimp. Specifically, the way the two arms dealers of the story attack the crustaceans… Read More »
CYRUS
A man, a woman, her son. It’s a situation of jealous hostility explored many times, but never more honestly, more painfully, or with bigger laughs than in Jay and Mark Duplass CYRUS. Made with an improvisational style that perfectly evokes the awkward immediacy of three people working through a new relationship that changes all their… Read More »
DESPICABLE ME
In DESPICABLE ME, the direct honesty of childhood innocence, in the form of three orphan girls, goes head to head with the evil machinations of a super villain feeling his evil competition nipping at his heels, usually with marine life. The result is a smart, funny, and perceptive animated film that dresses up its unabashed… Read More »
DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS
The greatest crime committed by DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, and there are many, is that it might prevent the viewers who have suffered through it to never discover the original, Francis Vebers delicious LE DINER DE CONS, on which it was based. An original of which the re-makers have completely missed the point. Of course, Americanizing… Read More »
THE OTHER GUYS
A rambling script that never quite takes the aim it meant to at the rarified world of high finance proves little impediment to THE OTHER GUYS, an uneven comedy redeemed by the inspired casting of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as cops with nothing in common paired up on a career-making case. Forget the brief,… Read More »
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD, adapted from the graphic novel of the same name by Bryan Lee O’Malley, redefines the cinematic linear narrative by frog-marching it straight into the psyche of the post-adolescent zeitgeist. A slick synthesis of graphic novel and cinema, it becomes much more that just he sum of its parts, it becomes… Read More »
THE SWITCH
THE SWITCH, based on the short story Baster by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a quiet comedy that is also an introspective mood piece about Wally (Jason Bateman) an inadvertently funny, introspective and somewhat moody man. Speaking to a particular pocket of time, the first decade of the 21st century, and a particular place, New York City,… Read More »
MONEYBALL
The starring role in MONEYBALL is not a showy one. Rather it requires of the actor playing it to posses a consummate skill in inhabiting a character rather than merely playing one. Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A’s must be all things to all people, low-key and cool as he is glad-handing… Read More »