The Green Hornet (review)
He doesn’t exactly kick ass: he is an ass. Life as a masked crime fighter with some slick wheels to groove him around town is not the chick magnet he imagined it would be…
comedy
Season of the Witch (review)
The screenplay is like a transcription of a Dungeons and Dragons session: better hope you make a high saving throw during the wolf attack in Wormwood Forest! The “performances” are like clueless imitations of Monty Python by actors who don’t understand comedy. And those are its good points.
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “A Christmas Carol”
Doctor Who has been doing amazing things with TV since 2005, but this may be the best example yet of how gonzo and how simultaneously emotionally satisfying TV can be these days.
Gulliver’s Travels (review)
If you’ve been possessed of a burning desire to behold Jack Black’s belly flab in 3D, then I am delighted to announce that your moment has arrived. What’s that? You say it’s Black’s buttcrack you crave the sight of, rendered in three glorious dimensions? This, my friend, is your lucky day.
Little Fockers (review)
It mystifies me as I try to fathom just what the hell an actor with the stature of Robert DeNiro is doing in a movie that finds the height of its humor in a child’s projectile vomiting and four-hour boners.
The Tourist (review)
Who knew the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had such a sense of humor? A nomination for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, for The Tourist? Unless… No… They can’t mean “Inadvertent Comedy,” can they?
The Nutcracker in 3D (review)
You already know the score — duh da-duh-da-duh! duh da-duh-da-duh! — but in case you’ve forgotten, The Nutcracker in 3D will attempt to mainline it into your brain, fuel-injecting sugar-plum fairy juice into your festivus lobe at the drop of, um, a sugar plum. If you think that’s a horrendously mixed metaphor, it’s got nothing on this polar-express train wreck…
Love and Other Drugs (review)
Maybe the romantic comedy about a couple of sociopaths is where the Hollywood expression of the genre has been heading all along, since such films of recent vintage have been populated by unpleasant people doing unpleasant things in the hopes that we will be somehow charmed by them. Perhaps it was only a matter of time before pathological charm was deployed.
Tangled (review)
Between the title change and writing in a male character who appeared to be taking over the film, Disney didn’t seem at that interested in making a Rapunzel film that was actually about Rapunzel. But I should have trusted. Because if there’s one thing Disney has in spades — besides pink princesses — it is a capability to transform simple cartoons into cinematic magic.
Due Date (review)
Welcome to the ritual humiliation of Robert Downey Jr. Gotta wonder if the dude simply is a masochist who enjoys looking deeply embarrassed onscreen or if someone has some serious dirt on him — worse than the stuff we already know about him, that is. Or maybe he’s just a whore who will do anything for the $12 million he reportedly received for this film…
