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, a spectacularly untalented actor turned equally untalented drama teacher at a high school there. Driven from a… Read More »
FOOT FIST WAY, THE
THE FOOT FIST WAY, an indie comedy made in just 19 days, was picked up by Will Ferrell’s production company, and it bears many of the hallmarks found in Ferrell’s recent spate of films. It involves sport, in this case Tae Kwon Do. It involves a clueless hero (played by co-writer Danny McBride, not by… Read More »
THE STRANGERS
THE STRANGERS has distilled the horror film down to its basest elements. It is nothing more than 90 minutes of watching a couple being stalked and assaulted in their house out in the deep dark piney woods. In this, it speaks to a deep-seated modern anxiety about not even home and hearth providing safety. Alas,… Read More »
SEX AND THE CITY
SEX AND THE CITY, the television series, was all about fashion labels and sex. Delivered in tantalizing half-hour gobbets, it was the perfect fantasy antidote to real life. The women were fabulous, the stories were glamorous, the dialogue wittily impudent, and the glorification of the trivial was a deliciously wicked guilty pleasure. This is a… Read More »
BIGGER STRONGER FASTER
Everything you thought you knew about steroids is wrong. Everything you suspected about the demoralizing effect that the media’s obsession with perfection has on our psyches is true. BIGGER STRONGER FASTER not only makes the case for both those propositions, it also demonstrates how they are inextricably entwined in the fabric of the American consciousness.… Read More »
KUNG FU PANDA
In the grand tradition of the DRUNKEN MASTER series, the one in which the hero could only wage righteous martial arts warfare when in an advanced state of inebriation, comes KUNG FU PANDA, about a bear that can only wage righteous martial arts warfare when, well, that’s the problem. Po is the unlikely eponymous panda… Read More »
YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN
In what circle of Hell did YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE ZOHAN get the green light? It’s not that we go to an Adam Sandler comedy, those in which he has a producing and writing credit, that is, with hopes high. Or even raised for that matter. But this stinking pile of crass anti-humor masquerading… Read More »
THE HAPPENING
THE HAPPENING can be most charitably described as clumsy and moribund. Clumsy in the way the premise of how exactly it is that nature is taking its revenge on humankind is presented, and moribund in its determined hushed and whispering tone. Now, the hushed whispering tone is very effective in a well done mood piece.… Read More »
WALL-E
If you remember what the folks at PIXAR did with a pair of Luxo lamps and a bouncing ball 20 or so years ago, then you know that these animation wizards have an uncanny ability to imbue to the most unlikely of inanimate objects with a complex emotional life. Two decades on, a state-of-the art… Read More »
PROMOTION, THE
THE PROMOTION bills itself as a comedy, and elements of it do fall into that category, but at its core, this is an incisive and often merciless deconstruction of the American Dream. What writer/director Steve Conrad is getting at here, amid the absurdity rife in the general human condition, is the dark side of that… Read More »
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